The Nintendo Direct of September 2025 arrived jam-packed with new Nintendo Switch game announcements, including some rather unexpected ones. You’d be lying if you said you had a Pokemon life simulator in the vein of Animal Crossing and Minecraft on your list, for one example. In amongst news of remasters and re-releases, there were plenty of new first-party reveals, as well as some neat tidbits for those awaiting word of what’s next for Super Mario.
While not everything was for everyone – of course, we all have unique tastes and preferences – this was a pretty good Nintendo Direct! There was a little something from every genre, the return of fan-favourite franchises, and plenty more besides.
Here’s all the major highlights from the Nintendo Direct, as picked by the ScreenHub team.
Nintendo Direct: Major highlights for September 2025
Pokémon Pokopia steals the show
Pokémon Pokopia absolutely stole the latest Nintendo Direct, for its wild ideas and genre combo. This is a Pokemon life simulator game where you are a Ditto which has taken the form of a young child. In this form, they seek companionship and a cosy home, so they set about building just that – planting crops, terraforming land, building structures, creating furniture, and then making friends.
When this game was revealed in the Nintendo Direct, it immediately brought to mind Minecraft or Animal Crossing. It looks like a cosy combination of these two games, with the addition of cute Pokemon pals wandering your land. Keep an eye on Pokémon Pokopia in 2026 – it feels very likely to be a new cosy game smash hit.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book looks like a lush, magical adventure
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book looked absolutely gorgeous in the Nintendo Direct. This next game in the Yoshi spin-off series sees Yoshi entering a special storybook, to solve a variety of mysteries. While in the book, Yoshi and his surrounds are depicted in a wonderful 3D art style that actually resembles a whimsical stop-motion animation. The world is rendered in clay-like fashion, and not to mention, everything in this world looks incredibly cute.
With each new Yoshi game, Nintendo explores new and more novel ideas – see Woolly World and Crafted World, for example – and this seems to be the next logical extension. With each of this game’s predecessors being pure and beautiful in approach, we expect no less from this adventure.
Mario Tennis Fever sends the Mario babies to the jungle
Mario Tennis Fever didn’t have us hooked until it revealed one key aspect: a story mode featuring the Mario babies on a quest through various terrains. It felt like a pretty wild reveal in the latest Nintendo Direct. One moment, this trailer was revealing more about tennis gameplay, including trick shots and special rackets. The next moment, Mario and his friends were transformed into helpless babies.
As announced, Mario Tennis Fever isn’t only a tennis simulator. When you’re not hitting the courts, you’ll be able to head into Adventure Mode, which seemingly lets you free roam through various worlds, which feature tennis as a side quest, as well as other mini-games. We’ll certainly be paying attention to whatever’s going on in this game when it launches on 12 February 2026.
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined launches in 2026
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined looked simply delightful in the Nintendo Direct. This newly-announced game reimagines the classic adventure of Dragon Quest VII with a whole new 3D art style (adapting Akira Toriyama’s iconic artwork) that allows it to feel bigger and brighter. It looks a lot like an animated film, which contributes to a sense of epic wandering.
What’s most enticing about this particular remake, amongst a host of other Dragon Quest remakes, is that Square Enix will seemingly be taking liberties with the story and style, to make this a more streamlined, modern journey. While having games replicated in remake form can be fun, it’s always compelling to see how looser, more creative remakes – like Final Fantasy 7 Remake – re-interpret the story for a whole new audience.
Nintendo announces the return of the Virtual Boy
Nintendo bringing back the Virtual Boy in 2025 is so bizarre and unexpected that the news out of the Nintendo Direct can only be taken with a bewildered smile and a nod. Of course. Why shouldn’t the Virtual Boy be re-released in modern form? This device was a critical and commercial failure on launch in the 1990s, but there are enough people with nostalgic, positive memories – and it’s such an oddity – that there’s absolutely an audience appetite to see it return.
Wild prediction, but it feels highly likely that even though the device flopped on launch, this reimagining will instantly sell out. There’s certainly enough morbid curiosity from Nintendo fans to make it happen. After all these years of the Virtual Boy being considered a failure, its 2025 re-release might just turn the tide, and make the entire experiment worth it, after all.
