Culture

Smoking Toad, F-Zero Beavis, And Other Weird Nintendo Gigaleak Finds

The recent “Gigaleak” of Nintendo assets has given us an inside look at the development of some of our favorite games. But as one might expect from a massive collection of prototypes and early builds that were never meant to see the light of day, there’s a good deal of weird and otherwise out-of-place stuff…

The Last Of Us Part 2‘s Stuntwoman Spent Several Days Pretending To Die

The first time stuntwoman Amy Johnston worked with Naughty Dog, she performed motion capture for Nadine Ross in Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Her task—to portray a mercenary who could kick Nathan Drake’s ass—was suited to her skill set. The daughter of a kickboxing world champion and a third-degree black belt martial artist…

What Are You Playing This Weekend?

The weekend is for filling in for our usual weekend guy, which will be a nice chance to fill the blog with things I like. That doesn’t leave time for very many video games, so enjoy them in my absence, reader. I’m curious about Thousand Threads, a Steam open-world game my colleagues were excited about…

The New Battletoads Game Is Finally Coming Out August 20

The first new Battletoads game in over 25 years is coming to Xbox One and PC via Steam next month.  A new game in the series that originally began on NES, Battletoads is an animated beat ‘em up that’s doing everything it can to channel the love and nostalgia around the 1991 release. It’ll also…

Final Fantasy XI Is Still Getting New Story Content 18 Years Later

Final Fantasy XI’s producer announced yesterday that the game is getting a new storyline, in an incredibly lovely little August update letter to players. While Square Enix continues to maintain its first MMORPG through regular patches, Final Fantasy XI hasn’t gotten any new story content since 2015’s Rhapsodies of Vana’diel update, which more or less…

Track: Back on the Chain Gang | Artist: The Pretenders | Album: Learning to Crawl

Baseball’s Digital Fans Are Oh No

Like football leagues in Europe, Fox’s Major League Baseball broadcasts are trying to liven up empty stadiums with fake, digital fans. And like football leagues in Europe, things are occasionally, and extremely, fucked up. While from a distance Fox’s Unreal Engine-created crowds look…OK, provided you don’t think too much about the fact there are no…

What Lurks Beneath

Jocelyn Joret is an artist based in Canada who has done work for companies like Ubisoft and Gameloft. You can see more of Jocelyn’s stuff at her ArtStation page

Throwing Paper Mario‘s Confetti Is My Happy Place

Sadly, it feels like I’m reaching the end of my time with Paper Mario: The Origami King. I’ve loved everything about it—well, almost everything—but my favorite part has got to be the simple act of tossing confetti around. The Mushroom Kingdom is in total disarray by the time you get to explore it thanks to…

A Salute To The Lovable Losers Of Pro Evo’s Master League

There’s a lot to make fun of when it comes to Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer series and its inability to secure properly licensed teams/leagues, but one shining exception to this mockery is the game’s roster of fictional players, known as the “Master League Defaults”. While the specifics of who they are and how you use…

House Votes Down Amendment That Would Have Stopped The Military Recruiting Via Twitch

Following recent controversies surrounding the US military’s efforts to recruit teens via Twitch, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this week proposed an amendment that would have banned the armed forces from any further attempts. This evening, the proposal was voted down. When presenting the amendment, Ocasio-Cortez gave a speech where she outlined the way Twitch is…

Gigaleak Suggests Animal Crossing Could Have Been ‘Human Crossing’

Was Animal Crossing almost Human Crossing? Files unearthed in the massive Nintendo “Gigaleak” suggest that homo sapiens were once intended to appear in the first entry of the popular life-sim series, a Japan-only release called Animal Forest Some background: Animal Forest—or Dōbutsu no Mori, in Japanese—released in 2001 on the N64. Later that year, it…

Splinter Cell Is Getting An Anime Adaptation On Netflix

Ubisoft and Netflix have partnered to develop a Splinter Cell anime with John Wick creator Derek Kolstad as writer and executive producer, a representative for Ubisoft has confirmed to Kotaku According to earlier reporting by Variety, the Splinter Cell anime has already received a two-season, 16-episode order from Netflix. In speaking to Kotaku, Ubisoft would…

Streamers Are Misusing Twitch’s ‘Just Chatting’ Section, But It’s A Symptom Of A Larger Problem

Of all of Twitch’s non-gaming categories, “Just Chatting” seems to have the most clearly defined purpose. It’s for chatting. That’s it. And yet, after the platform dissolved its ill-defined “IRL” section into 13 different non-gaming categories in 2018, Just Chatting became its catch-all successor. Now it’s a juggernaut—Twitch’s top category. But it’s also clear evidence…

Animal Crossing Characters Can Hilariously Eat Shit Again

While the latest Animal Crossing: New Horizons update mostly focuses on fun summertime diversions, it’s time we give it up for the greatest addition to the island getaway simulator: tripping. Previous games in the Animal Crossing series included a hidden luck mechanic that would influence things like how much money dropped from trees, the rate…

Offbeat ’90s RPG Moon Finally Heads West August 27

The official English translation for “anti-RPG” Moon: Remix RPG Adventure will come out for Nintendo Switch on August 27, almost 23 years after it launched on the original PlayStation. Moon was the brainchild of the now-defunct Japanese studio Love-de-Lic, which was founded by a team of developers who had previously worked on games like Chrono…

How’s It Going?: Future Edition

It’s Thursday already, woo! Welcome back to our daily open thread. A friend and I were talking over Zoom about the future earlier this week, namely the near future of America’s November elections. Given how grim everything is these days, I tend to panic when I think too hard about what’s going to happen, which…

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Camera Glitch Is Back As An Official Feature

Players can once again show off their islands in clutter-free videos thanks to a new feature that dropped in last night’s Animal Crossing update which makes it possible to turn off the game’s HUD while using the in-game camera. Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ in-game camera makes it easy to automatically gets rid of these annoying…

2K’s New NFL Games Will Feature Real-Life Players

2K Games announced today that it’s struck a deal to be able to include the names, numbers, and likenesses of actual NFL pros in its upcoming football games. “We’re thrilled to be working with the NFLPA and OneTeam to bring the biggest and best stars in football to the games we’re working on,” the company’s…

Sonic & Friends

Moka is a freelance illustrator based in the UK. You can see more of Moka’s stuff at her ArtStationand Instagrampages.