Nintendo seems to have forgotten about The Legend of Zelda’s 40th anniversary, but we haven’t. SmashPad staffers and contributors were asked to provide their Top 5 Zelda games. We’ve taken those lists and turned them into the staff’s Top 10.

PAX East 2026 is right around the corner, and we’re working with our Penny Arcade friends to give away five (5) tickets to the show in Boston! Find out how!

This demo only gives you this one shift, and it doesn’t take long at all. You’re tasked with taking stock out of the back and putting it on the konbini sales floor, making sure everything at the store is in order, and then opening up shop. Simple, right? Oh, if you only knew.

Put bluntly, Vampire Crawlers chokeslams boredom through a glass table. The demo is impressive in its simplicity, but requires a hell of a lot more of you than Vampire Survivors did. In that sense, poncle could be on track to deliver a follow-up worthy of its still budding name and elephantine reputation. Can their lightning strike twice?

The Steam Next Fest demo of Cleaning Up!, which you can play now, features four levels that provide just enough to get your feet wet. There’s an apartment, a castle, a museum, and a cafe, each providing a new gimmick to differentiate itself enough. Only one of these levels qualifies as challenging, but again, it’s a demo.

With all this in mind, I can’t generally recommend City Hunter, but if you do want to see what TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine gaming had to offer by means of a cult product and you have a surplus of disposable income, have at it.

When Super Bomberman Collection was unveiled during this month’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, I got wide-eyed. Ever since I got my hands on Mega Bomberman on the Sega Genesis during the unfortunate but memorable days of the Sega Channel (yeah, I’m that old), I’ve been a big Bomberman fan. Little did I know that game would end up being the high point of the series for me until now, more than three decades after I was introduced to it.

With grotesque scares as potent as its pulse-pounding action and puzzle-box level design as engaging as any given combat scenario, Resident Evil Requiem is an engrossing thrill ride throughout that hooked me from the start, and in true Resident Evil fashion, has kept me on that hook long after the credits rolled the first, second, and even third time.

Two new games, Bonkers and Goof Troop from the SNES, headline this release of Disney Afternoon Collection. Is it worth potentially double dipping if you already own this compilation on another platform just to get these two additional games? That depends on your nostalgia for the cartoons these games are based on. For everyone else, Disney Afternoon Collection is a great compilation of classic 8-bit games.

I’m glad I was able to ignore the overall negative sentiment around the game and play the PS5 version of Avowed, which now has the anniversary update. The reason? Avowed is a unique RPG with thrilling combat and an intriguing storyline that features a God in your head.

I really enjoyed my time with this. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I’d be able to recommend this if it wasn’t a game based on one of my favorite anime. It’s definitely for the diehard fans that know the source material and have been keeping up with the series for years. If it weren’t for some of the balancing issues, I wouldn’t have minded some of the painful flaws. Sadly here, if you remove one issue, another two grow in its place.

This feels like a demo for a game that still has a lot of work to go before it’s ready for launch, so I hope the developers get the time this demo needs to fulfill its potential.