Enlarge / Mario Kart is a safe standby for any couch co-op session. (credit: Nintendo)

With Valentine's Day on the horizon, we've overhauled our guide to the best couch co-op games, adding several new recommendations for you to share with a loved one.

Video games have gone a long way toward keeping us sane during our pandemic days. But while there's never been more people playing together, finding the best co-op games to play with a partner at home can still be tricky. More and more titles have (understandably) emphasized online multiplayer, leaving the market for quality couch co-op experiences somewhat thin.

If you and your loved ones are looking for some good times for the living room, though, we can help. Below, we've rounded up 26 of the best couch co-op games we've played, with options that should appeal to both hardcore and less experienced players. Whether you're eager for a half-hour session or a weekend-long binge, interested in a platformer or a twin-stick shooter, or playing on PC, Switch, Xbox, or PlayStation, our selection should have something worth your time.

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  Holes. [credit: Sam Machkovech ]

What good is a next-gen console without any "new" video games to play on it?

That question loomed as I unpacked an Xbox Series X console at my home office last week, nearly two months before its $499 retail launch on November 10 . Such early access to a state-of-the-art gaming machine surely comes with some concession, and in my case, that was a severe asterisk on its compatible content. Unlike other console-preview opportunities I've had in my career, this one didn't come with a single new or freshly updated game in the box.

The funny thing is, this is exactly what I'd asked for.

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  The entire PS5 hardware library, as revealed by Sony. [credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment ]

Sony has issued a rare denial in response to a recent report from Bloomberg suggesting the company has cut back production of the upcoming PlayStation 5 due to component shortages.

“While we do not release details related to manufacturing, the information provided by Bloomberg is false," the company said in a statement provided to GamesIndustry.biz . "We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production."

Bloomberg's report cited "people familiar with the matter" to suggest that the company was lowering its expected worldwide console production from 15 million down to 11 million for the fiscal year ending in March 2021. That's due to "production yields as low as 50% for its SOC," according to the report.

Once an upstart, the Forza franchise is now firmly established within the pantheon of great racing games. The first installment was created as the Xbox's answer to Gran Turismo , but with a healthy helping of online multiplayer racing, too. Since then, it has grown with Microsoft's Xbox consoles, with more realistic graphics and ever-more accurate physics in the track-focused Forza Motorsport series as well as evolving into open-world adventuring (and even a trip to the Lego dimension ) for the Forza Horizon games.

If you're one of the millions of people who've played a Forza racing game, you're probably aware of the games' AI opponents, called "Drivatars." When the first Drivatars debuted in Forza Motorsport in 2005, they were a substantial improvement over the NPCs we raced in other driving games, which often just followed the same preprogrammed route around the track. "It was a machine-learning system on a hard drive using a Bayesian Neural Network to record [racing] lines and characteristics of how somebody drove a car," explains Dan Greenawalt, creative director of the Forza franchise at Turn 10 Studios, in our latest War Stories video.

In fact, the technology originated at Microsoft Research's outpost in Cambridge, England, where computer scientists started using neural nets to see if it was possible to get a computer to identify a Formula 1 driver by the way they drove through corners.

Enlarge / The Battletoads are back. We wish that were better news. (credit: Dlala Studios / Rare, Ltd. / Xbox Game Studios )

As an early '90s pre-teen, I was convinced that Battletoads was absolutely massive. I later realized that wasn't the case; a lot of people hated how hard the first game was, while subsequent games flopped. But I'll always be fond of the original game's graphical tricks, over-the-top combat, and wacky mix of genres.

Nothing—not even this week's inspired-yet-messy series rebirth—can take that away from me. For all of its good moments, this year's 10GB version of Battletoads is somehow less diverse and exciting than the 256KB original.

The Looney Tunes -caliber stuff

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  When three players are battling simultaneously, the results can be a mess to keep track of. [credit: Dlala Studios ]

The new game, simply titled Battletoads , sees the series' corporate handlers at Rare Ltd. hand their web-toed fighters to Dlala Studios, an English developer with an eye for hand-drawn 2D art. You can tell why they got the job after playing the first two levels. The game's best bits are a delight to play, either solo or with friends.

Enlarge / S/PDIF connections like this one that have worked since the Xbox 360 won't be compatible with the upcoming Xbox Series X.

The Xbox Series X will be missing the optical S/PDIF audio output that was present on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 hardware lines.

The digital audio port was visible on images of a prototype casing for the Xbox Series X that leaked in January . That port was missing from some ( but not all ) of the updated images of the Series X shown in promotional materials Microsoft released earlier this week .

Windows Central and IGN's Ryan McCaffrey have now confirmed with Microsoft that the S/PDIF output will indeed be absent from retail Series X units.

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  Xbox Series X. It's tall. And it has a modified controller compared to the Xbox One pad. [credit: Xbox ]

Back in the middle of 2016, Microsoft was just revealing the first details of Xbox One Scorpio (which became the Xbox One X), and Sony was just confirming the rumored existence of the PlayStation 4 Neo (which became the PS4 Pro). At the time, we had a simple question for the console industry's near future:

"In 2021, will developers still be expected to make games fully compatible with the original Xbox One and PS4 (console hardware that will be pushing eight years old at that point)? Or will developers be allowed to focus on the 'legacy' Neo/Scorpio hardware and (presumably) whatever new top-end upgrade will replace them?"

Now that such a heralded console future is approaching the console present (a year ahead of our original predictions), we at least have a temporary answer as far as Microsoft is concerned. In a recent interview with trade magazine MCV , head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty revealed that there are no plans to sequester the first year or two of games for the upcoming Xbox Series X away from compatibility with the original Xbox One.

"As our content comes out over the next year, two years, all of our games, sort of like PC, will play up and down that family of devices," Booty explains. "We want to make sure that if someone invests in Xbox between now and [Series X] that they feel that they made a good investment and that we’re committed to them with content."