BODY: If you're the type who groans "Wait, that came out this week?!", 4Gamer's weekly "This Week's Motivation" column exists for you. For the stretch of July 20–26, 2026, two series offshoots headline the release slate — and both take beloved franchises somewhere new.
The bigger swing may be Conqueror's Blade: Three Kingdoms. The original Conqueror's Blade built its following on massive, multiplayer siege warfare, pitting hundreds of players against fortified walls. This new entry relocates that formula to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms era — arguably the single most reworked setting in all of Japanese and Chinese gaming. Trading medieval European castles for the warring states of ancient China, it's a natural fit for a genre that thrives on large-scale melee.
The other marquee release is Splatoon Raiders, the first spinoff in Nintendo's ink-splattering shooter series. After three mainline entries and a decade of turf wars, Nintendo is branching the Inklings and Octolings out into new territory — a notable move for a franchise Nintendo has guarded closely.
The column, as always, rounds out the week with a broader survey of what's shipping, so genre fans beyond these two tentpoles have plenty to circle on the calendar.
The insider take
From Tokyo, the pairing is telling. The Three Kingdoms setting is catnip here — Koei Tecmo's Dynasty Warriors built an empire on it, and any game invoking Guan Yu and Cao Cao arrives with instant cultural fluency for Japanese players. Splatoon Raiders is the quieter surprise: Nintendo almost never spins off its newer IP, so a Splatoon offshoot signals real confidence that the brand can carry weight beyond its core competitive loop. Watch whether it leans single-player — that's where Japanese fans have long wanted more Splatoon to live.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net − 最新記事 (Japanese).