BODY: Nonogram fans, it's time to sharpen your pencils. Jupiter has announced Picross S CLIMAX, a collection that pulls together the best of its long-running Picross S series. It launches in Japan on December 10, 2026, for Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch.
The game has 1,020 puzzles picked from all nine earlier Picross S games. There are 450 standard Picross puzzles and 450 Mega Picross puzzles, plus 90 Color Picross, 15 Clip Picross and 15 Extra puzzles. The Extra puzzles are the biggest in the collection, with grids up to 40×30. Every mode lets you choose Easy, Normal or Hard.
Longtime players get a reward. If your console has save data from any game between Picross S and Picross S9, you unlock 40 new, very hard bonus puzzles. The game also includes background music from across the series, which you can pick while you play, plus a Sound Player for listening to the old soundtracks.
On Switch 2, you can play with buttons, the touch screen or the Joy-Con 2's mouse controls, which should make the huge grids much easier to handle. Up to four people can also solve puzzles together using button controls. The digital version costs ¥2,980. A ¥3,480 physical edition is coming for Switch 2 only, and it's the first time a Picross S game has been sold on a cartridge.
The insider take
In Japan, Jupiter's Picross S games are a lot like crossword books at a train station kiosk. They're cheap, they come out regularly, and they quietly sell to commuters who play a few grids on the way home. Since the first Picross S in 2018, the series has put out about one game a year as a download-only release, and it has built a loyal audience that rarely gets attention in the gaming press. Calling this one "CLIMAX" and giving it a physical release makes it feel like a farewell, or at least the end of an era. Because the bonus puzzles depend on old save data, it's clearly aimed at the fans who bought every game. Picross is sometimes treated as a relic of Nintendo's handheld days, but this shows the puzzle culture in Japan is still going strong.
Originally reported by AUTOMATON (Japanese).