What a great day for Switch co-op news! During the recent Nintendo Direct, Nintendo announced the surprise Switch release of Pikmin 1 and 2, shared a new trailer for Pikmin 4, and announced the Switch version of Vampire Survivors. Perhaps more exciting than those announcements, though, are the announcements of the (single-player) Super Mario RPG re...

Today's Nintendo Direct brought lots of exciting co-op announcements such as the upcoming co-op Switch version of Vampire Survivors and the surprise Switch release of Pikmin 1 and 2. With that surprise release, all three existing Pikmin games are now available on Switch. That's as good an advertisement as any for the upcoming release of Pikmin 4, which is due out on July 21 and features 2-player local co-op.

Nintendo's Pikmin series of real-time strategy games didn't start out as a cooperative series. The first game was single-player only. That changed when Pikmin 2 arrived on the Gamecube way back in the innocent year of 2004, adding a cooperative Challenge Mode. Switch owners can now experience that classic co-op razzle dazzle, because Pikmin 1 and Pikmin 2 have just been released as digital downloads. Buy them individually (2 is the one to get) or together for a nice discount, play the heck out of them, and then you'll be ready for the upcoming Pikmin 4.

In our Beyond Co-op review of Vampire Survivors, I asked, "how about a sequel with co-op?" Dreams do come true sometimes, as proven by today's announcement that 4-player local co-op will be added to all versions of the game on August 17! Not only that, but Vampire Survivors will launch on Nintendo Switch on the same day. All versions of the gothic Roguelike will remain affordably priced at $5.

Darius might be Taito's best-known series of shoot 'em ups, but the "Ray'z" series is popular too. Beginning with 1994's 2D RayForce (also known as Layer Section and Galactic Attack), the series went on to spawn two polygonal entries: RayStorm in 1996 and RayCrisis in 1998. Various iterations of these games will be included in a pair of upcoming collections for PlayStation and Switch from ININ Games: RayStorm X RayCrisis HD Collection and Ray'z Arcade Chronology. Both titles are due out on June 30.

The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) is an MMO that lives up to its name. This game has been around for quite a while, and it just keeps growing. At the recent Xbox Games Showcase, Microsoft announced that the "Necrom" expansion, already released on PC, would soon be coming to Xbox. Just over a week later, the expansion has landed on both Xbox and PlayStation. Now console gamers can play as the new Arcanist class and journey to the lands of Telvanni Peninsula and Apocrypha as they fight to save reality itself.

The road to Dead Island 2 was longer than most. In 2011, Techland and Deep Silver released the first Dead Island, a sort of zombie-themed take on Borderlands. Following a couple of expansions and spinoffs, Dead Island 2 was announced way back in 2014. We’ve been covering it since then! The undead sequel changed development hands a few times o...

Back in April, Modus Games announced that Hammerwatch II would be coming to consoles and PC in the summer. Hammerwatch is a top-down, 2D action RPG series with an emphasis on cooperative play. Today, the developer announced that the Steam version of Hammerwatch II will be launching in August, with console versions to follow later in the year. ...

The first Cooking Simulator is, reportedly, a very good cooking game for consoles and PC. How can Big Cheese Studio improve on such a finely crafted meal of a game when making the sequel? Why, with co-op, of course. Cooking Simulator 2: Better Together will feature 2-player online co-op, allowing friends to prepare meals and perform other tasks together. The sequel is heading to Steam at the end of the year.

Gal Guardians: Demon Purge, the Castlevania-style co-op game starring twin sister demon hunters, first launched digitally on all platforms as Grim Guardians. Shortly thereafter, the title changed to the superior title that we have today. Publisher PQUBE also announced physical editions for PlayStation and Switch, and now those physical editions are available.

Dead Island 2 is a huge game, but games can always be bigger. Today's update adds the new ability to switch skins for the playable characters. All six characters get a free unlockable skin, and premium skins can be purchased as well. Additionally, Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver have announced Twitch drops and the contents of paid expansions that will be arriving in the future.

Sega might not be too keen on making sequels to its games (Sonic Superstars notwithstanding), but it has been willing to license out sequels such as Streets of Rage 4. We'll soon see another such licensed sequel in the form of C-Smash VRS, the upcoming PlayStation VR2-exclusive sequel to Cosmic Smash. While Cosmic Smash is a fairly obscure arcade/Dreamcast game, there's no denying that this sequel looks like a super fun virtual reality game.