A Fortnite Creative map caused a stir over the weekend by being Fortnite‘s most popular individual mode for a short period of time. Steal the Brainrot, a user-made competitive tycoon map that was ripped off from a massively popular Roblox game, managed to pull in just over 183,000 concurrent players on Sunday, making it the top mode in Epic’s metaverse for a couple hours, and sparking a conversation among players about what’s going on.

Those are impressive numbers for a Creative island, though it’s not truly accurate that it ever was the top Fortnite mode–the reality is that it peaked at number 3. At the time that Steal the Brainrot hit its top mark of 183k concurrent players, Fortnite’s main Battle Royale mode had more than 300,000 people playing, split between build, Zero Build, and ranked. Likewise, Reload had about 200k players at the time spread across its variants. On Sunday, Epic even promoted the game on its social channels.

In terms of how it stacks up against other Creative maps, Steal the Brainrot is only the third Creative island to pull at least 183k concurrent players. The top mark ever comes courtesy of the deathmatch map Super Red vs Blue, which had 235k players at once in May.

It’s hard to say exactly why Steal the Brainrot blew up like it did on Sunday, but the mode has been steadily popular since it launched in early July. The Roblox version, called Steal a Brainrot, is currently Roblox’s third most-popular game, as it regularly averages more than a million players at a time. Considering the massive amount of legal heat Roblox is facing at the moment, it could be that Fortnite is catching some players who are leaving that much more popular metaverse experience.

Not all games will land the same in all cultures across the world, and Steam is making a small change to review scores to reflect that. When accessing games with enough scores in your client’s selected language, you’ll see a separate score for that language alongside other metrics.

Valve published a news post for this change, which says that “when there are enough reviews written in a particular language, Steam will calculate a review score for that language,” with review scores displaying based the user’s primary language.

“What this means is that some languages may show more positive review scores, while others may show more negative ones, even for the same game,” the post explains.

With Steam’s userbase exploding in places like China, it’s not hard to see the utility of this. Things that work in games popular with one culture may not work well in another. Or a game may be written well in its developers’ primary language but have a very rough translation–something that won’t be relevant to the users who speak that native language.

This change will take effect for games with more than 2,000 publicly visible reviews, and at least two reviews written in at least one language. The post says Valve “purposely made these thresholds higher than the 10 reviews required to calculate the Overall Review Score” because it wanted to be “pretty confident” in the language-specific score before showing it to other users.

As shown in the screenshot above, provided by Valve, this isn’t meant to take information away from users or manipulate scores. The score still shows the sentiment across all reviews alongside the reviews in your language, as well as all recent reviews, and a deeper language breakdown.

The post says that Valve it knows any changes to review scores will concern users, and states the company has built a variety of features in User Reviews that can be disabled or enabled, should you want to only see the raw review information.

The Battlefield 6 open beta is currently in its second weekend, and players are still adsorbing the latest entry to the franchise. Meanwhile, Digital Foundry has shared its technical breakdown from the first weekend of Battlefield 6’s open beta, and the early verdict is very good.

That’s not to say that the open beta was flawless. In the opening minutes alone, DF broke down some of the issues with the destructible environments. There are occasional glitches, including pieces of rubble floating in air without being connected to the structure around them. Battlefield 6’s buildings appear to fall apart using a state-based system rather than registering unique damage or breaking points. Yet it’s still an improvement over Battlefield 2049 and Battlefield 5.

Visually, DF saw the best results when running the SSGI option on PC, which allowed for more natural lighting, and suggested that this feature should be included for PlayStation 5 Pro. Unsurprisingly, the PS5 Pro performed better than the standard PS5, but the gap wasn’t as great as it was between the Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S. In a side-by-side comparison, the S noticeably struggled to keep up with the on-screen details that the X handled more smoothly.

Even in the beta’s current state, DF said that Battlefield 6 “is very shippable at the moment” and added that it has “a level of mechanical polish that feels top-notch.” However, DF added that the game could really use some raytracing embellishments and that it doesn’t feel innovative in the way that some of the previous titles have.

Among players, one of the current complaints is that the size of the 12v12 Rush mode is too small, but the final game’s bigger maps may solve that issue. Regardless, Battlefield 6’s beta has already passed Call of Duty’s concurrent-player record, as well as the record of the previous Battlefield games on Steam. The second Battlefield 6 open beta will conclude on August 17.

It feels like it’s never been a better time to be a Virtua Fighter fan. I’ve loved this series since its inception, and seeing it again at Evo 2025 after a lengthy absence felt incredible. Both Virtua Fighter 5 REVO and the upcoming new Virtua Fighter game were heavily showcased at the event, and the sense of excitement around the series in the fighting game community and beyond has never felt stronger.

With both the current and upcoming games featured at the show, we had the opportunity to chat with Seiji Aoki, the lead of Sega’s Legacy Virtua Fighter team, and Riichiro Yamada, who is producing the New Virtua Fighter Project.

One of Sega’s announcements at EVO was the release date for the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of VF5 REVO, now titled VF5 REVO World Stage. The title isn’t just a multiplatform rebrand–it will be receiving a host of new updates like cross-platform play, with the crown jewel being a brand-new, dedicated single-player experience akin to the Quest Modes seen in past Virtua Fighter games.

I’ve been consistently surprised at the amount of effort Aoki and his team have been putting into updating and revitalizing this classic title, and seeing the new single-player mode was a clear sign that they’d been listening to player feedback for such an addition. But there’s still one thing I needed to know: What about all the extra character customization items and decorations from Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown that hadn’t made their way into REVO?

“We’ve heard from players that they want more of the items they saw in the previous releases,” Aoki said. “So, in World Stage mode, there is a tournament. As you proceed, you’ll be able to earn some of those customization items. I do feel like there needs to be more new items, but for now, there are no plans.”

An element where the Virtua Fighter teams have been stepping up their game has been community engagement. Besides opening an official Discord and running a global tournament series, the team has also been polling players on subjects like what controllers they use, what type of stages they dislike, and–most prominently–a global character popularity poll, with the results displayed on the official VF website.

I asked Aoki if the polls offered up any surprises. “We did do the poll around the time the first tournament for VF5 REVO was held in Chicago, at Frosty Faustings. Seeing the players there, I really felt that the characters that are relatively unpopular in Japan tend to be popular in the West. For example, Aoi was pretty popular, Brad was very popular, Eileen was very popular. Those Western characters usually are not on the top of the list in Japan. In Japan, it’s more like Akira, Jacky, Pai, [and] Sarah. It was interesting to see, and I think that was reflected in the poll as well.”

With the launch of VF5 REVO came the game’s first major balance update in over a decade. Does the team use things like polls, online play data, and other analytics to decide on gameplay tweaks?

“We’re not really thinking about things like who to make weaker or stronger, but to put everyone on a similar level,” Aoki replied. “How do we balance characters and keep what makes them distinct? Previously, a lot of players said that Taka-Arashi was too strong. But we tried not to make him specifically much weaker, but bring everyone to his level.”

Aoki also says that further tweaking is unlikely in the near future. “There are no plans for changes right now. But as time passes, we might get to a point where we say, ‘Oh, maybe we should make some balance changes, when the timing is right.’ But at the moment, there are no plans. Currently, I feel like the gameplay is in a complete state, but we’ll see how it goes.”

While Virtua Fighter titles have appeared as sub-games in many of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon titles, an official series compilation has never happened. I wondered if Aoki’s legacy Virtua Fighter team had ever considered doing a Capcom Fighting Collection-style release of Virtua Fighter and similar Sega fighting games, such as the Fighting Vipers series and Last Bronx. “I’ve definitely seen those compilations and thought, ‘We should do something like that.’ …By doing that, we could bring back the old fans in addition to bringing in new fans. It’s something to consider.”

While VF5 REVO had a full tournament as part of the Evo Extended Lineup, what many VF players at the event were hoping to see was the New Virtua Fighter Project. Sega did not disappoint, with a gameplay showcase trailer in the Evo Arena on finals day debuting to cheers and awestruck gasps (and my frenzied screams of delight). With my anticipation continuing at a fever pitch, I was eager to chat with producer Riichiro Yamada about the upcoming game.

Though only a select few characters have been shown so far, those that have, such as Akira and Wolf, have seen some big changes to their appearance. They also look markedly older, potentially indicating the passage of time in the VF world. I asked Yamada if he could tell us a bit more about these changes. “We can’t say much just yet, but yes, the time has passed on. The setting for VF5 was roughly around the year 2006. This game is not a parallel world or an alternate universe–it’s based on a certain timeline.”

Yamada also elaborated on how they’re approaching character design this time around: “So up until now, the characters have been designed based on their combat style, with a short backstory for each character. We’re redesigning them now based on their lifestyle, why they are fighting, what they are fighting for. That’s the new approach that we’ve been taking.”

One of the most talked-about elements of what’s been shown so far–and that’s been generating even more buzz with the Evo gameplay showcase trailer–has been the realism and fluidity of the combat animation, with details like characters having distinct guarding animations for specific attacks. “We really want people to be able to see the changes that we’ve made,” says Yamada. “Virtua Fighter up until now might have been seen as very plain, not very flashy. However, we don’t want to change it up too drastically–we want a cool, flashy sense of realism. Change it, but don’t lose the essence.”

“In the process of creating this game, I’m always thinking, ‘What can we progress? What can we evolve? What can we make improvements on?’ When I was a child, I used to watch kung-fu movies. Those movies make people and their combat look very exciting. I really wanted to bring that element into the game–the flow, like the smoothness, all the things I used to see in those classic kung-fu movies, you know, make people excited by watching those. That’s the approach I’ve been taking right now.”

“Before we released those trailers, I didn’t know how the users would respond,” he continues. “But seeing everyone enjoying it, I’m really relieved to see that players are excited.”

Compared to other fighting games, Virtua Fighter’s control scheme is more simplistic, with three main buttons and skills executed with directional movements. Only one game in the series–Virtua Fighter 3–significantly altered the control scheme by adding a fourth button. With the new Virtua Fighter making some clear visual changes, I wondered if the game would try anything new with the control scheme. “We’re trying a lot of different things as we’re fleshing out gameplay,” Yamada answered. “But VF started as an arcade game, with deliberately simple controls. Punch-kick-guard is easy for players to grasp. So while I can’t give specifics, the concept that I have in mind is ‘anyone can play anyone can play easily, without any stress.'”

This being a game by Ryu ga Gotoku Studio–a team known for its storytelling prowess and character-building–many are expecting a heavy emphasis on story this time around compared to previous titles. “Previously, VF lacked much of an in-game narrative. Again, I can’t say too much, but I would like people to look forward to how we put the narrative and gameplay elements together at the finish line.”

Story of Seasons fans don’t have to wait much longer to return to the Grand Bazaar on Nintendo Switch 2, Switch, or PC. The remake of the 2008 Nintendo DS hit launches August 27 with two physical editions to choose from. Standard and Premium Editions are available to preorder for either Nintendo console, with the Switch 2 versions priced $10 higher than the Switch editions. Like all games published by Marvelous for Switch 2 (so far), Grand Bazaar is a true physical edition with the full game on the card, regardless of whether you buy the $60 standard or $80 Premium Edition.

Revealed during a Nintendo Direct in March, the Grand Bazaar remake has significantly overhauled graphics, a new mode of transportation in the wind glider, new characters and story events, and full voiceovers for the first time in franchise history. Check out both editions below. And if you need a new game to pass the time while you wait, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma–also published by Marvelous–is on sale for the first time for Nintendo Switch 2 at Amazon.

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar – Premium Edition

Story of Seasons was formerly known as Harvest Moon, which is a bit confusing since Harvest Moon games are still released to this day. When Marvelous decided to take over North American distribution responsibility from Natsume many years ago, the name had to be changed due to Natsume holding the rights to the title. So if you’re an old fan of Harvest Moon trying to get back into its relaxing world, Story of Seasons is the name to look for.

More Farming and Life Sims for Nintendo Switch & Switch 2

Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 players have many farming and life-sim games with physical editions to collect, including several other Story of Seasons games, Rune Factory, Harvest Moon, and Hello Kitty Island Adventure. We made lists featuring games from these franchises below. Some of the games are new releases, a few are releasing in the coming months, and others are older titles that are now available for cheap.

Story of Seasons Games

Three Story of Seasons games are available for around $30 each in physical format. It’s also worth noting Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life’s Premium Edition is up for grabs for only $38 at Amazon.

• Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life — $27.82 ($30)
• Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life – Premium Edition — $38
• Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town — $35
• Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town — $30
• Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar | August 27
  • Nintendo Switch 2 — $60
  • Nintendo Switch — $50
• Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar Premium Edition | August 27
  • Nintendo Switch 2 — $80
  • Nintendo Switch — $70

Rune Factory Games

For a more action-oriented farming/life sim, check out Guardians of Azuma, the recently released entry in the Rune Factory franchise. The highly rated Switch 2 and Switch game launched alongside Nintendo’s new console on June 5. Amazon is offering the standard edition on either console for $10 off. Amazon is also one of the only retailers with the Earth Dancer Edition in stock for its $100 MSRP.

• Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
  • Nintendo Switch 2 — $60 ($70)
  • Nintendo Switch — $50 ($60)
  • Earth Dancer Limited Edition — $100
• Rune Factory 3 Special — $28 ($30)
• Rune Factory 3 Special – Golden Memories Limited Edition — $50 ($70)
• Rune Factory 4 Special — $29
• Rune Factory 4 Special (Preowned) — $15
• Rune Factory 5 — $27 ($30)
• Rune Factory 5 – Earthmate Edition — $130 | MSRP was $80

Hello Kitty Island Adventure

Hello Kitty Island Adventure – Gift Box

The wildly popular Hello Kitty Island Adventure life sim is available in a Deluxe Edition with hundreds of pieces of in-game items and gear for $54 (was $60). A standard edition launches August 29 for $40, and a special $60 Gift Box with trading cards and other collectibles is up for preorder ahead of its November 7 release.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure for Nintendo Switch:

• Standard Edition — $40 | August 29
• Deluxe Edition — $54 ($60) | Available now
• Gift Box — $60 | November 7

Harvest Moon Games for Nintendo Switch

Two Harvest Moon games, The Lost Valley and Skytree Village, recently released together in a value bundle for $40. You can also preorder the upcoming Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home Special Edition for $40.

• Harvest Moon: Home Sweet Home – Special Edition — $40 | October 31
• Harvest Moon: One World – Complete Edition — $30
• Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley and Skytree Village — $40
• Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos — $20 ($50)
• Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos + Notepad — $25

Another great option for fans of life sims is Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time. It didn’t get a physical edition in the US, but Level-5’s long-awaited sequel to the 2012 3DS hit has Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 digital editions.

To celebrate the start of the 2025 Pokemon World Championships, The Pokemon Company is giving away another special freebie in the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet games.

For a limited time, players can claim a free Farigiraf based on the one used by Luca Ceribelli, winner of last year’s Masters Division. This Farigiraf has the same stats and nature as Luca’s, as well as the same moveset.

To receive the Pokemon, you must fire up your copy of Scarlet or Violet on either Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2 and follow these steps:

1. Press X to open the menu
2. Select Poke Portal
3. Select Mystery Gift, then choose Get with Password
4. Enter the code W0RLDSARM0RTA1L
5. Download the gift and save your game

The Farigiraf code will only be valid until August 23, so you have until then to claim the free Pokemon.

The 2025 Pokemon World Championships are underway until August 17, with dedicated competitions for the main Pokemon video game series as well as the Pokemon TCG, Pokemon Unite, and Pokemon Go. Other in-game freebies will be distributed throughout the weekend. You can see the full list on the official Pokemon website.

Farigiraf isn’t the only free Pokemon that Scarlet and Violet players can claim right now. As part of the ongoing Treasures of Ruin event, you can receive a shiny Wo-Chien via Mystery Gift until September 30. The other shiny Treasures of Ruin will be distributed in the coming weeks.

When thousands of works were deindexed from Itch just a few weeks ago, livelihoods hung in the balance.

Itch hosted the works of developers, artists, writers, and zinesters. It was (and is) home to taboo pornography, garden-variety smut, video game memoirs, and game jam detritus. Over the last five years, it has perhaps become best known for hosting massive charity bundles, supporting causes like Black Lives Matter, Ukraine war relief, and Palestinian liberation. Those bundles were lined with small projects from hobbyist creators alongside big hits from professional developers. When payment processors forced Itch to de-index thousands of games following a pressure campaign from a right-wing anti-porn group, they threatened all of these avenues of artistic expression and financial income.

Nathalie Lawhead, a developer and artist who has hosted their work on Itch for years, is one of the creators who could be affected by the large-scale push for increased censorship. Their game, Everything is Going to Be Okay, is part of the permanent collection in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. But despite its acceptance into a major hub of mainstream arts culture, their work has struggled to find a home in the world of video games.

“The work I host on Itch is all the work that I had struggled in the past to get on mainstream storefronts… I can’t count the number of times that my work has been rejected because of reasons like ’simulated error’ (glitch art), or because it features a visual style a storefront deems inappropriate, or because it is built a certain way that’s not standard enough for these storefronts,” Lawhead said over email.

Lawhead’s work is not, strictly speaking, “gamey.” They have described Everything is Going to Be Okay as a zine, and their upcoming game Blue Suburbia as an interactive poem. Lawhead’s words and their work reflect a broader truth about Itch: that it has acted as a bastion for the weird and off-center from its inception.

An image from Lawhead’s Everything is Going to Be Okay

For Lawhead and many other developers, the mass de-indexing represents a threat to that weirdness, whether their works are NSFW or not. In our conversation, Lawhead emphasized, “We are losing our ability to create work like this, slowly.”

Other developers worry about the effect these bans will have on their thought process.

“I almost included a sex scene in my game Spring Gothic, but if I had put a sex scene in there, it would have been delisted,” visual novel developer and critic Kastel said on a phone call. “I don’t want to think like that. That’s self-censorship.”

For Howling Angel Games founder Olivia Nenmyx, their freedom to approach sensitive topics was hard-won.

“I had a lot of religious or psychological guilt around abnormal kink,” they said over Zoom. “It took a lot of therapy and encouragement to start writing porn.”

It’s that experience that makes them determined to fight for the right of expression, but also frightened of what this precedent could mean.

“I know first-hand how strong the pressure to fall-in-line can be. I see a lot of people shying away from or not expressing themselves in ways that are controversial,” Nenmyx said.

In kind, Kastel sees a danger in trying to police more taboo work.

“The executives, they don’t really care if works are SFW or NSFW. Those are terms that creators and players decide,” she said. “In the end, the payment processors are deciding everything and they have their own paradigms.”

An image from Kastel’s Spring Gothic

In addition to these concerns, the de-indexing has caused a lot of confusion and misinformation. Press and players cited Consume Me and Mouthwashing as examples of affected games, but Itch had actually de-indexed both games before receiving pressure from payment processors, for unrelated reasons. The mess has caused some developers to criticize Itch fiercely, claiming the storefront should have done more, both to protect developers and warn them about what was happening.

Lawhead, however, believes that Itch deserves some benefit of the doubt.

“They don’t have the resources that a place like Steam does,” Lawhead said. “They are about as indie as I am. It’s not hard to knock something like that off its feet and make it impossible for it to get back up… The only way to fight this is to understand that we are all in this together, and that includes Itch.io too.”

But the question remains: How and where should independent artists share their work? As “someone that’s already tried every possible alternative” and “that’s been very vocal about alternatives out there,” Lawhead admits they are skeptical there are real substitutes for Itch. Indeed, in the weeks since this policy changed the landscape of Itch, no obvious new options have emerged–although the dust is still settling and it is unclear what will remain in the aftermath or if Itch’s policies will change. But the threat payment processors pose to marginal work is bigger than Itch or even Steam. True alternatives may be hard to find.

Some developers are already planning to divest. While Nenmyx wants to maintain a relationship with Itch, they are actively looking for alternatives and have added a storefront to their studio’s website.

“I will continue to host free demos on Itch to try and get people onto my site, but I don’t think I’m going to host paid content on Itch in the future,” they said. “That’s not set in stone though.”

Kastel believes that trust will be slow to return, if it comes back at all.

“Even if Itch survives, people are going to be concerned that their games will be pulled off,” Katel said. “The optimal way is probably, make a jam on Itch, but also upload a mirror copy somewhere else, like the Internet Archive.”

But while individuals scramble for potential solutions, the stakes of the broader fight remain high. For Lawhead, the fate of Itch could set a precedent that would affect our online lives in every way.

“Given the bigger context of how corporations and monopolies have funneled everyone into these heavily-controlled walled gardens that now occupy our daily online lives, or even the way us developers can distribute software… I don’t think there’s any coming back from this.”

It’s hard not to see what they mean, as the UK threatens the country’s access to Wikipedia or as Steam removes games like Vile: Exhumed. But Lawhead is not giving up.

“We need Itch.io to live,” they said. “We need our own precedent.”

With certain parties targeting payment processors as a way to control what kinds of games are allowed to be sold, paying for games on services like Steam is a little bit weird right now. In fact, if you’ve tried to pay for something on Steam using PayPal recently, you might’ve noticed that the option isn’t available. This is apparently isolated to certain countries, and now Valve has offered an explanation.

“In early July 2025, PayPal notified Valve that their acquiring bank for payment transactions in certain currencies was immediately terminating the processing of any transactions related to Steam,” Valve wrote on its Purchasing Issues support page, as reported by RockPaper Shotgun. “This affects Steam purchases using PayPal in currencies other than EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD.”

“We hope to offer PayPal as an option for these currencies in the future but the timeline is uncertain,” the page continues. “We are also evaluating adding additional payment methods on Steam for the customers affected by this. In the meantime, please use one of our other current payment methods during checkout. If you can’t use any of the available options, you can consider using a Steam Wallet code to add funds to your account.”

Valve further confirmed to RPS that this is “regarding content on Steam related to what we’ve previously commented on surrounding Mastercard.”

“One of PayPal’s acquiring banks decided to stop processing any Steam transactions, which cut off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies,” Valve explained via a spokesperson.

In other words, unless you’re paying with euros, pounds, dollars (US, Australia, Canada), or Japanese Yen, you can’t make Steam purchases using PayPal for the time being.

Amazon is offering a steep discount on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s Collector’s Edition Soundtrack. Fans can get the nine-disc, 344-track box set for $114. That’s still expensive for a collection of CDs in 2025, but the Collector’s Edition version of the soundtrack originally sold for $194 at Amazon last year. The list price has since dropped to $158 on Amazon, but it’s a huge price regardless. The Collector’s Edition includes a Master Sword USB drive loaded with additional 5.1 surround sound tracks. The only downside with this deal is that Amazon currently estimates a one- to two-month wait for delivery. In any case, you won’t be charged until your order ships.

If dropping over $100 on a box of CDs doesn’t feel right, the standard edition is also on sale for a substantial discount. You can pair it with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Original Soundtrack for $38.71.

If you want a much larger Master Sword to display in your game room, Bandai Namco’s Proplica Master Sword is in stock at Amazon for $186 (was $200). Yes, it’s pricey, but it measures 42 inches and looks really cool. It also happens to have sound effects and rumble. The Master Sword replica can be displayed on the included stand with or without its decorative sheath.

For a comparison on the scope of Tears of the Kingdom’s soundtrack, the Breath of the Wild Original Soundtrack has 211 songs on its five-disc soundtrack and clocks in at 6 hours and 21 minutes total. Parts of some songs are reused and/or modified in the sequel, but much like the “familiar” version of Hyrule you explore, Tears of the Kingdom’s soundtrack feels fresh and distinctly its own. And considering the sequel adds sprawling areas above and below Hyrule to explore, it’s not surprising Tears of the Kingdom’s soundtrack is roughly five hours longer.

More The Legend of Zelda Original Soundtracks

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening Original Soundtrack

A bunch of Zelda games have received physical soundtrack releases over the years, including Skyward Sword, Link’s Awakening, The Wind Waker, and several other all-time greats. The soundtrack for Link’s Awakening is pretty darn cool, because it includes two discs for the original Game Boy version and two discs for the Nintendo Switch remake. The disc art is fantastic, and the pair of jewel cases are packaged in a stylish green display box.

Like Tears of the Kingdom, the other Zelda soundtracks have a mixture of English and Japanese on the covers, booklets, and other inserts. CDs (Compact Discs) aren’t region-locked, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to listen to the music. Some fans may need to purchase a CD player, though.

We made a list of other Zelda soundtracks you can find on Amazon right now. We also included the excellent Zelda 30th Anniversary Concert CD and a couple of orchestral performances of Zelda music on vinyl.

The Legend of Zelda Soundtracks on CD

• Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Collector’s Edition Soundtrack — $114
• Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Soundtrack — $78
• Zelda: Breath of the Wild Soundtrack — $38.71
• Zelda: Link’s Awakening Soundtrack — $35
• Zelda Twilight Princess Soundtrack — $43
• Zelda: Skyward Sword Soundtrack — $36.86
• Zelda: The Wind Waker Soundtrack — $42
• Zelda: Majora’s Mask Soundtrack — $38
• Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Soundtrack — $53.80
• Zelda: 30th Anniversary Concert — $27.61

The Legend of Zelda Music on Vinyl

• Slovak National Symphony Orchestra – Hero of Time — $48 ($60) | Preorder
• London Music Works – The Legend of Zelda Music (Vinyl) — $59

Some of the soundtracks in the lists above are shipped and sold by Amazon (or Amazon Japan), while others are sold by third-parties and fulfilled by Amazon. Keep in mind that game soundtracks, for the most part, lack consistent MSRPs, so prices tend to move around quite a bit. Amazon’s “list price” for the Tears of the Kingdom soundtrack has changed multiple times over the past year.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword Original Soundtracks

More Nintendo Soundtracks

It’s also worth noting that Nintendo Switch Online members can listen to many Zelda tunes and other music from Nintendo’s first-party game catalog on the Nintendo Music app on iOS or Android. But if you love CDs and Nintendo, check out the Super Mario and Pokemon physical edition soundtracks below.

Super Mario Music on CD

Super Mario fans can pick up the soundtrack for Super Mario Odyssey as well as the nostalgic 30th Anniversary CD.

• Super Mario Bros Music: 30th Anniversary — $27.66
• Super Mario Odyssey Soundtrack — $37.89

Pokemon Game Soundtracks

Many Pokemon original soundtracks are available on CD, including Pokemon Legends: Arceus and the latest mainline games, Scarlet & Violet.

• Pokemon Scarlet & Violet Soundtrack — $33
• Pokemon Legends: Arceus Soundtrack — $29.77
• Pokemon Sword & Shield Soundtrack — $27.47
• Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee Soundtrack — $33
• Pokemon Sun & Moon Soundtrack — $27
• Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Soundtrack — $30
• Pokemon X & Y Soundtrack — $25.89
• Pokemon Black 2 & White 2 Soundtrack — $27
• Pokemon Red & Green Soundtrack — $31

With the arrival of new endgame content in a Monster Hunter Wilds update earlier this week, a pesky crashing bug also snuck into the game. But Capcom has stated that the issue has now been addressed with a hotfix. The patch notes also point to a couple of other problems getting rectified with version 1.021.01.00.

The crashing bug could be triggered by fainting or utilizing fast-travel to get back to camp. Capcom quickly became aware of the problem after releasing the major update for the action-RPG on August 12. That patch actually saw the company move up endgame content–such as tempered versions of monsters like Rey Dau in nine-star quests–from the still-planned Title Update 3 in September.

This new hotfix also ensures that the Wide-Range skill works as promised while playing online. In addition, the patch helps gunlancer players, since the weapon’s “Focus Strike would sometimes not chain into the finishing attack.” This should work properly now.

Monster Hunter Wilds has struggled sales-wise lately, with concurrent player numbers on Steam dipping lower than Monster Hunter World at one point in June. For more, check out GameSpot’s Monster Hunter Wilds review.

The full patch notes are below:

Bug Fixes and Balance Adjustments

• Fixed an issue where, under certain conditions, the game could crash when a player returns to camp after fainting or via fast travel.
• Fixed an issue where the Wide-Range skill effect on Appraised Talismans was not correctly applied to other players during online play.
• Fixed an issue where the gunlance’s Focus Strike would sometimes not chain into the finishing attack.