'Star Fox' and 'Denshattack!', among the 7 most outstanding video games of this June

June is shaping up to be relatively quiet in terms of releases, and the avalanche of presentations accumulated at the beginning of the month will monopolize the industry's attention. Nevertheless, the calendar offers us essential proposals that are worth keeping an eye on, including a new dose of local talent.

A small chronological exception, as the game technically came out at the end of May, but it was announced by surprise in mid-month and deserved to appear on some calendar. We are talking about the new game from Yacht Club Games, famous for having developed Shovel Knight in 2014, and who are now presenting their first project outside of that universe. Mina the Hollower is a neo-retro style action game, inspired by Game Boy Color graphics but with modern features, in which the player will be able to live the adventure of Mina, a scientific but combat-trained little mouse. So far, it has been very well received by the press and holds the best rating of this year on the review aggregators Metacritic and OpenCritic.

After its exclusive premiere on PlayStation 5 and its subsequent landing on PC, the colossal second installment of Square Enix's project also lands on Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch 2. Cloud and his allies explore the planet beyond the walls of Midgar in an ideal port for those users who have not yet been able to delve into one of the most ambitious role-playing games of the decade.

One of the great attractions of this month, which also takes into account the local scene, is the return of this role-playing and action classic from 2001. Gothic 1 Remake has been developed in Barcelona by Alkimia Interactive, a studio under the international label THQ Nordic, which created the studio in 2021 with the main objective of reviving this title. The team has recreated the dark universe and atmosphere of the title from scratch with the Unreal Engine 5 engine after having played the original, and already showed a large part of their work at the last BCN Game Fest.

The local talent quota remains very strong this month too thanks to the veterans Undercoders, an independent studio from Barcelona created in 2005. More than 20 years later, the studio is strongly betting on a purely arcade and addictive experience inspired by the classics of Japanese arcades, where reaction speed and on-screen coordination are everything. Denshattack! also features a frantic soundtrack and a very stylized art, the result of inspiration during the team's train journeys through the Japanese country. The game has been seen at various fairs in recent months and has caught the eye of the international public. What's more, it arrives on all current platforms and its demo can already be tried.

It is one of the biggest productions of the month, even though its beautiful HD-2D art, which combines two- and three-dimensional elements with other visual effects, may deceive us. This role-playing game is published by Square Enix, and was partly created by the same team that developed Octopath Traveler. The title proposes accompanying Elliot on a fantasy journey that transcends time and space, full of puzzles, varied scenarios, and many mysteries to discover. The most differentiating point from other similar titles is the real-time combat and the possibility of controlling the fairy accompanying Elliot independently, or even doing so in cooperative mode.

The charismatic Dave still has one more adventure to tell us, after the original 2022 game reached 8 million copies sold this year. The Koreans Mintrocket, a subsidiary of the titan Nexon, are releasing a major paid expansion that transports the diver to a new wild ecosystem and expands his story. The objective in In the Jungle is to hunt new species of freshwater fish in tropical rivers while dodging jungle predators to, as usual, supply the exotic dishes of Bancho's nocturnal sushi bar.

The month's highlight and one of the new exclusives for Nintendo Switch 2, which continues to expand its catalog after the new Yoshi and the Mysterious Book this May and the upcoming Splatoon Raiders in July. The story of Fox McCloud and his team gets a complete facelift in a remake that takes advantage of the new machine's technical capabilities to offer spectacular intergalactic combat. The game maintains the frenetic and arcade essence that landed on the Nintendo 64 in 1997 within the on-rails shooter subgenre, so named for featuring limited movement along a predetermined path. The original installment had already received a remaster (2011) and a reboot (2016), but now it comes full circle with this remake that, in addition, expands its story and adds more content such as an online co-op multiplayer mode.

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A month of presentations

It is traditional for the month of June to bring more announcements than releases. The now-defunct E3 electronics festival was a regular meeting point for many of the industry's presentations. The legacy left by the fair is a calendar that brings together different events that unveil new projects or exclusive content for upcoming video games. For those who want to stay up to date, here are the main presentations to mark on your agenda.

• State of Play (June 2): Sony's exclusive format, ideal for learning about upcoming releases and news from the PlayStation environment. It has already been confirmed that new details will be revealed at this event for Marvel's Wolverine, its next big exclusive arriving this September.
• Summer Game Fest 2026 (June 5): The big show of the summer season, and the little brother of the December Game Awards gala, also directed by Geoff Keighley. It is considered one of the most relevant on a general scale thanks to its major world premieres.
• Day of the Devs (June 5th): The audiovisual benchmark for discovering independent productions, which stand out for their creativity and originality.
• Wholesome Direct (June 6): A presentation that has gained a lot of popularity lately, dedicated exclusively to more relaxing and welcoming proposals (known as cozy games).
• Future Games Show (June 6): The gala organized by the portal GamesRadar, which usually offers a frantic pace filled with new images and content from multiple games.
• N3 2026 (June 7): The digital event focused on showcasing and promoting projects and studies from Spain, as well as those from the Latin American sphere.
• Xbox Games Showcase (June 7): One of the most anticipated events of the year, especially for Xbox console users, now under the direction of new director Asha Sharma. Microsoft will showcase the power of its franchises and the future of the Game Pass service catalog.
• PC Gaming Show (June 7): The classic fair focused exclusively on the computer market, with special spaces reserved for strategy games, as well as for peripherals.
• Nintendo Direct (no date): It is inevitable that a new appointment around the Japanese brand will be announced, which was one of the first to innovate with this digital presentation format. Novelties are expected from its upcoming exclusives, such as Star Fox itself, but also some more surprises than what the future offers.