Epicās mass layoffs have fans worried about games like Rocket League. The creative director of Sonic Team is puzzled by a fanās tattoo. Devil May Cry 5 and a bunch of other games seem like they are coming to Switch 2. Welcome to your Morning Checkpoint for March 27, 2026. How much more bad news can game companies fit in before the end of the fiscal quarter?
Weāre less than a week out from the release of the second Mario movie. Will it be good? Will it top the last oneās $1+ billion box office gross? Will much of the original score once again be replaced by licensed hit singles primed for meme-fueled revivals on TikTok? I have my seats booked and am ready to smuggle in all of the snacks for the kids. In the meantime, Elizabeth Warren has questions for MrBeast. Donāt we all?
It sounds like Wario is in The Mario Galaxy Movie but Waluigi isnāt
Chris Pratt, who voices, Mario, and Charlie Day, who voices Luigi, were invited on the Tonight Show with noted gaming buff and advertiser-friendly stooge Jimmy Fallon to hype the movie and also answer a fan theory pop quiz. The duo was supposed to press a red shell if the answer to a question was no and a question block if the answer was yes.
Is there a third Mario brother in the movie? No. Is there a a non-Mario character in the movie? Yes. Thatās seemingly the already confirmed appearance by Fox McCloud, though some fans will no doubt hope itās Samus, Kirby, or one of the other Smash Bros. crossover favorites. But what about Wario and Waluigi? In response to that question, Pratt and Day pressed both buttons. One interpretation is that it was a yes to Wario, whose presence has been indicated in leaks, and a no to Waluigi. So maybe Nintendo is still saving a surprise or two for the final release.
Despite mass layoffs, Epic claims Rocket League isnāt going anywhere
āThe Psyonix team is a core part of Epicās game development,ā a spokesperson told PCGamesN. āRocket League is still a priority, and the team continues to work on making a great game for the community.ā The free-to-play car soccer game remains a weekly go-to for millions of players, even if the only thing that changes about it is a conveyor belt of branded microtransactions running through the in-game shop.
Sonic creator is confused by fan getting the blue blur tattooed on his elbow
As the original designer, Iām happy to see it, but why on earth did he get that tattoo thereā¦?
äøęć«čŖåć®ä½åć«åŗä¼ćē¬éļ½ https://t.co/TorPRrbNIUā Kazuyuki Hoshino (@KazuyukiHoshino) March 26, 2026
A viral tweet this week showed someone with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles all in spinning ball form tattooed on his elbow as a reference to 2003ās PS2 classic Sonic Heroes. āAs the original designer, Iām happy to see it, but why on earth did he get that tattoo there?ā wrote Kazuyuki Hoshino, creative director at Sonic Team an art director on Sonic Heroes. The fan in question later appeared to write back, āNot sure how to answer that, it was a very painful time.ā
Devil May Cry 5 is reportedly coming to Switch 2, as are a bunch of other ports
Thatās according to a Taiwan ratings board leak. The others include Clive Barkerās Hellraiser: Revival, Blood West, UN:Me, and Hell Is Us. The Switch 2 dev kit restrictions seem to be loosening. Should we be expecting another Nintendo Direct soon?
What if the N64 had an open-world game the size of Skyrim?
Thatās the question guiding YouTuber James Lambertās latest homebrew experiment which attempts to create an N64 game with a sprawling map (via FRVR). āThis game has a draw distance on the scale of games likeĀ Skyrim,ā he said. āYou can stand on one corner of the map and see all the way to the other side.ā
Itās currently about four times the size of the game world from Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Lambert has been updating the project to get the framerate stable and address other bugs. Itās not clear that you can really do anything in the game at this stage, but itās a neat experiment in spec-maxxing a retro artifact.
Itās rougher than ever out there for laid-off developers
Deus Ex composer Alexander Brandon told PC Gamer he sent out 50 resumes last year and only got one call back. All of the snake oil selling around generative AI isnāt helping.Ā āThere are CEOs saying nobodyās going to have a job in, like, two seconds, and weāre all going to be in a utopia,ā he said. āMoneyās just going to flow into our mailboxes and weāre going to turn into Wall-E or whatever. Iām just like, stop the techbro crapāI think people are sick of that.ā
He continued, āPeople drink all of this Kool-Aid and are like āif we donāt use this language, we are behind.ā We needĀ to be behind. We need to acknowledge our limitations, and we need to be able to say, as humans, āwe canāt keep pushing ourselves through this shitty economy and shitty situation.ā Not to soapbox too much.ā
ICYMI:
- Anti-woke grifters who are weirdly committed to hating Marathon got suckered into a fake conspiracy
- Star Wars: Zero Company isnāt just a top-down XCOM-like strategy game
- Hades 2 finally comes to other consoles in April
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