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Here's our video-games news tailored for families. This week we have Trap Team details, Disney Infinity 2.0 DLC option and news on Nintendo's Skylander style figures and games.

Skylanders

The new Skylanders game is called Skylanders: Trap Team. The main new features are the Trap Master type of Skylander and the separate trap objects. The traps are made of "traptanium", and can be used to trap villains from the game to then be sent back in to fight for good rather than evil.

Trap Team will be available on PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, 3DS, Wii U, and -- a relief to many families -- Wii. With a new starter pack, the Trap Masters, new more basic Skylanders, and those different traps, that's a lot of new stuff to buy. Is this new trapping mechanic worth it?

Disney Infinity 2.0

Not to be outdone, Disney Infinity had its own announcement recently, for its new game Disney Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes. A starter pack that contains Black Widow, Thor, and Captain America, two power discs, and the Marvel Avengers Playset, but there may also be other non-Marvel characters coming to the game -- you can see Merida, Maleficent, and Stitch in the trailer.

According to our contact at Disney there is also a DLC option for owners of the original game that grants access to the new features and Marvel playsets. This, together with the full support of all the old toys and the new upgrade Skills Tree, makes for great value.

Nintendo NFP

Announced that it will also be joining the figurines party, with its own range of NFC (near-field communication) figurines of characters like Mario. It's calling these figurines NFP, which stands for both "NFC Featured Platform" and "Nintendo Figurine Platform".

The difference between Nintendo's figurines and those for Skylanders or Disney Infinity is that they'll work with multiple games to be released in the future. Like the figurines we're already used to, they will be able to store data.

Those looking forward to Mario Kart 8 can also get an added bonus if they register the game on the Club Nintendo website between 30th May and 31st July.

Also on Mario Kart is a smartphone app that offers race replay videos from Mario Kart TV along with stats for how your competitors are doing. We had a look at what the app might look like and it seems like a great way to extend this functionality beyond Nintendo's own devices.

Minecraft

Minecraft Realms is now live in North America. The service costs $13 a month and makes it much easier for those who aren't computer experts to have multi-player games of Minecraft for PC. As for the console versions of Minecraft, the PlayStation 3 edition is getting a disc release next week, on the 14th of May.

Retry

Finally, Angry Birds creator Rovio has released a new iOS game cleverly called Retry, presumably because it's so difficult that you will be hitting the retry button a lot. The retro-inspired game gives you a plane to fly past obstacles without crashing.

New Releases

  • May 9 - Bound By Flame (PC, PS4, PS3, 360)
  • May 14 - Minecraft: PlayStation 3 Edition (PS3 disc)
  • May 16 - Kirby: Triple Deluxe (3DS)
Avatar for Andrew Robertson
Andrew Robertson
Andy Robertson is the editor of AskAboutGames and has written for national press and broadcast about video games and families for over 15 years. He has just published the Taming Gaming book with its Family Video Game Database.