Nintendo Just Announced a Summer Release for a New Game in a Cult Classic Series

Nintendo has focused on promoting The Super Mario Galaxy Movie for much of the last month. With the movie doing well at the box office about a week after release, it's time for the company to lock in on what made them famous again: great games.

The first step towards that goal was met with an announcement that has been a long time coming for fans of the Rhythm Heaven series. Rhythm Heaven Groove will finally come out on Switch and Switch 2 on July 2, 2026. The game had been teased for the first time over a year ago, but fans had been waiting patiently for a release date.

The announcement also came with a new teaser trailer showing one of the mini-games in the new title. Feast your eyes on the musical bliss below!

The clip shows how players get to match the tune of a woman humming while chopping fruits and vegetables in her kitchen. It looks like it's more of the same gameplay in the niche series that has generated a cult of fans who love music games on Nintendo consoles.

The games often combine toe-tapping tunes with everyday activities that normally wouldn't have anything to do with music. Often, the minigames start to digress into something wholly original and, quite frankly, very weird.

From a gardener picking moles out of the ground to helping rocket ships launch into outer space on time, there's a never-ending supply of randomness in these games. The characters and sounds they make are all part of the unique, strange vibes you'll fall in love with.

Rhythm Heaven hasn't had a new game released since Rhythm Heaven Megamix on Nintendo 3DS in 2015. That game was a compilation of new and old minigames in the series, highlighting some of the best Rhythm Heaven tracks from the Nintendo DS, Wii, and Game Boy Advance titles.

Rhythm Heaven has been a great ambassador and example for the creativity that Nintendo exudes in some of its smaller series. The company often likes to cater to non-gamers in their secondary and properties.

Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda are always at the top of the food chain, but series like Rhythm Heaven have been able to carve a devoted, but smaller, fan group because they experiment with genre and bring in new gamers that might not play the classic titles in Nintendo's canon.