Photo: Goldin / The Pokémon Company / Kotaku / Eric Espada (Getty Images)
Playing in the NFL is tough and many players leave because of career-ending injuries or bad seasons. But after seven years in the league, Las Vegas Raiders linebacker Blake Martinez has retired mid-season for a different reason: He’s making enough money selling Pokémon cards—recently selling a very rare card for nearly $700,000—and doesn’t need the income he gets from playing anymore.
Las Vegas Raiders player Blake Martinez shocked many fans when he announced last week that he was retiring from the NFL at the relatively young age of 28. He was first drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 2016. Following four years with Green Bay, he joined the New York Giants in 2020 before suffering a torn ACL in 2021. He was released shortly after, and joined the Las Vegas Raiders where he seemed to be doing well this season. In his last game before his retirement, he racked up 11 tackles. However, selling Pokémon cards appears to be Martinez’s true passion—not to mention a pretty good source of income for him—and he’s focusing more on that now.
As reported by Dexerto, two weeks before announcing his retirement mid-season, the NFL pro sold an extremely rare and valuable Pokémon Illustrator card for a hefty sum. Last month, the card was graded a 9.5 “Gem Mint” quality rating, making it one of the best examples of this coveted card. On October 29 the card—which Martinez nicknamed “The Swirllustrator” because of two small swirl marks in the card’s artwork—was sold via Goldin auctions for a whopping $672,000.
Yes, this is the same type of rare card that Logan Paul paid over $5 million for earlier this year and wore around his neck during Wrestlemania in April, although his was graded a 10, or perfect quality.
Still, this is a big sale, and hardly Martinez’s first time buying and selling Pokémon cards. The former NFL player is a big fan of the cards and has been collecting them for years, though in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, his love for collecting and selling was reignited. He opens old and new card packs on his Instagram and shares his finds online frequently. In fact, Martinez claims to have found the rare “Swirllustrator” during one of these pack openings. The pro player also has a collectible card business, buying and selling rare cards online.
“I have chosen to step away from this career at this time to focus on my family and future passions,” explained Martinez in his retirement post on Instagram. It appears his “passion” is using the wealth he made in the NFL to buy and sell rare Pokémon cards. And honestly, I’m happy for the guy. He’s far less likely to suffer a terrible concussion while buying rare Pikachu cards online.
The mad lads at GameFreak have done it again. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet push the series’ overall Pokédex into four figures, and the special 1,000th Pokémon turns out to be a gold coin surfing freak with a fanny pack called Gholdengo. Is it going to sell me crypto? Is it made of crypto?? I can’t wait to find out.
I first learned about the Gholdengo from IGN, who noted the coin entity’s striking resemblance to a General Mills cereal mascot but was otherwise effusive in its praise. Gholdengo, it turns out, is the evolved form of Gimmighoul, a Dungeons & Dragons-style mimic chest revealed by Nintendo earlier in the month. How that evolution takes place is the real magic. YouTuber nickcucc described it as, “Probably one of the most tedious yet rad evolutions you’ll ever experience in your entire life.”
When you defeat a Gimmighoul it drops gold coins. Once you’ve picked up 1,000, your Gimmighoul will evolve into Gholdengo on its next level up. “Its body seems to be made up of 1,000 coins,” reads the Pokédex entry. “This Pokémon gets along well with others and is quick to make friends with anybody.”
I’m sure it is quick to make friends. One moment you’re feeding Gholdengo a Bocadillo de Jamón, the next it’s talking your ear off about how you can yield farm Dengo Coin at 16 percent and you should buy the dip on that FTX token that just blew up. Web 3.0 ain’t going to make itself. Now be a good Pokémon trainer and ditch those TMs for some NFTs.
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To the extent that Gholdengo looks like a walking Ponzi scheme, it’s a lowkey testament to the series’ own unflagging durability through the decades. Pokémon is too big to fail. Scarlet and Violet’s performance issues can’t stop it from being the most pre-ordered game in franchise history. So what if the series’ 1,000th creature looks like it just got back from making DeFi TikToks at Burning Man?
At the end of the day, good or bad, millions of people, myself included, will do whatever it takes to get another shot at catching these adorable abominations and run them through a spreadsheet calculus so obtuse it would make even your H&R Block accountant weep. Even if the Pokémon in question is a literal keychain, ice cream cone, or in this case, Gholdengo. I’m going to catch so many of these goddamn things, and we’re going to hold our diamond hands until the seas rise and swallow us whole.
One of Europe’s biggest fighting game tournaments, the Ultimate Fighting Arena (UFA), wrapped up on November 13. The three-day event in France was populated by big-name competitors like Goichi “GO1″ Kishida and Victor “Punk” Woodley, but it was teenage mad lad EndingWalker who ended up making waves by not just taking first in Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, but rushing offstage immediately after. It looked hilariously disrespectful, but EndingWalker said he was just “overwhelmed” by it all.
EndingWalker is a fresh face to the competitive fighting game scene, having only been competing since around January 2021. In the nearly two years since he hit the circuit, EndingWalker has participated in copious online Street Fighter V tournaments, typically placing in the top 10—if not outright winningas the relatively unpopular character Ed, a B-to-C-tier fighter known for his hit-and-run combat style. The UFA Street Fighter V tourney, only his second “offline” event, is his latest and most prominent win to date. Having pummeled folks like Punk and five-time Capcom Cup qualifier Amjad “AngryBird” Alshalabi, he’s clearly a dangerous new competitor.
Fighting game news site EventHubs reported EndingWalker won every single match set he played in, losing only one round to Dhalsim main Nathan “Mister Crimson” Massol. After tearing through the competition, Walker found himself facing Chun-Li player and Street Fighter coach Valentin “Valmaster” Petit.
Major footsies ensued, with each competitor gauging the other’s combat style before going in. EndingWalker gave Valmaster very little room to breathe, constantly stunning him and punishing his whiffed moves. It was brutal to watch. But what was most devastating about the match-up was the way he exited after winning the tourney.
Capcom
My dude straight-up said, “I’m out,” and just…Walker-ed off the stage, casually bypassing his first-place trophy. The crowd went wild for the victory, sure, but what sent me were the commentators, who couldn’t believe what they just saw.
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“Stay on the stage, young man,” one of the commentators yelled. “He just walked off,” the other said before concluding that the mad lad was “amazing.”
Walker eventually did return to the UFA stage to claim his trophy, later tweeting that he was “a bit overwhelmed in the end, which is why I left kinda quickly after winning.” He thanked everyone for the congratulations, said he had “a great time,” and mentioned this tournament was his second-ever offline event. The kid’s got a bright future in the FGC if he keeps this up.
Ever since Arceus made the world in its image, Pokémon fans have had to grapple with a huge choice for every mainline game: which version to get. That quandary will remain in place for the latest games, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, with many more unique features than usual, some even pertaining to the distant past or the far-flung future. We’re breaking down every difference between the two, to help you know which version to pick up.
Every generation of Nintendo’s monster-hunting RPGs splits up some of its roster of Pokémon, with a handful showing up in one game while remaining absent from the counterpart (and vice versa). This strategy makes a certain degree of sense, if somewhat cynically. Making some Pokémon available in one version but not the other certainly drives some to buy two copies of essentially the same game. Or, less cynically, it forces players to actually engage with each other and trade. But in Scarlet & Violet, there are many other core differences that might influence your decision, including whether you want things prehistorically themed, or perhaps decorated by the distant future.
The Pokémon Company / Kotaku
Screenshot: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet Legendary Exclusive
Koraidon (“ride-on,” geddit?) will be the motorcycle-inspired dragon beast that comes with Scarlet. Like it’s partner Poké Miraidon, it’s described as having “powers that far surpass those of other Pokémon,” but Nintendo has deliberately kept much about them both a mystery.
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Ease your holiday stress Vida Optima’s Delta 8 line includes gummies, caramels, and fruit chews, to kick back and chill out. The gummies and fruit chews in particular are a higher strength—25mg of hemp-derived THC in each vegan bite.
Koraidon is, as you might imagine, a mostly red monster, sporting what unquestionably look like a pair of wheels. Wheels it…doesn’t use. Instead, Koraidon gallops on its legs, which raises so many evolutionary questions. It has a feathery appearance, a bit like a prehistoric bird. Rideable, this Legendary can also fly and swim, making it quite the means of transport as you explore Scarlet’s open world.
Screenshot: Game Freak
Pokémon Violet Legendary Exclusive
Miraidon is Violet’s far more futuristic Legendary, and as you’d expect, it’s predominantly purple. Like Koraidon, it can take three different forms (formes?), using Drive Mode, Aquatic Mode, and Glide Mode. It too has a vehicular style, also sporting (albeit more subtle) vestigial wheels. Seeming like the lovechild of Pokémon and a Transformer, it has a metallic sheen, and a pixel display for eyes.
Quite where either Legendary will appear in the game is unclear, given we’ll now be able to tackle the game’s gyms in any order—perhaps they’ll simply trigger once you’ve done whichever proves to be your eighth. Or maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll be introduced earlier to make movement around the large game easier.
Image: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet Pokémon Exclusives
Larvitar, a rock-ground-type lizard creature who first debuted in Pokémon Gold and Silver.
Pupitar, the second-stage evolution of Larvitar. It floats for some reason. Though Pupitar hasn’t been officially confirmed, we’re including it since it evolves from a confirmed Pokémon. (One caveat though: In Pokémon Sword and Shield, Slowpoke, who has been part of the series since the days of Red and Blue, could not evolve unless you picked up the expansions.)
Tyrannitar, the final stage of Larvitar’s evolution chain. Unlike the prior two evolutions, Tyrannitar drops the ground-type affiliation and is rock-dark-type.
Stonjourner, a rock-type from Pokémon Sword and Shield who, I guess, is supposed to be a play on the famous Stonehenge monument in England.
Armarouge, a fire/psychic-type, brand new for Gen 9, with the appearance of a knight.
Koraidon, Scarlet’s legendary Pokémon and cover model.
Screenshot: Game Freak
Pokémon Violet Pokémon Exclusives
Bagon, a dragon-type Pokémon who debuted in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire
Shelgon, the second-stage evolution of Bagon. The same logic that applies to Larvitar’s evolution chain applies to Bagon’s, too.
Salamence, a dragon-flying type Pokémon and the final stage of Bagon’s evolution chain. Some people (guilty as charged) are convinced Salamence is the coolest Pokémon of all time, ever.
Eiscue, an ice-type penguin Pokémon with a giant ice cube for a face.
Ceruledge, not a relation of Honege, but a brand-new bipedal Pokémon with dual types, fire and ghost. With blades for arms, it’s a terrifying futuristic counterpart to Scarlet’s more Medieval Armarouge.
Miraidon, Violet’s legendary Pokémon and cover model.
For Scarlet players, you’ll be guided through your times in Paldea by Professor Sada. Given the Spanish influences on Paldea, it’s no coincidence that the Spanish for “past” is “pasada”—in other translations, her name varies between other words for “past” and “ancient,” while the Japanese original is Olim, the Latin for “once upon a time.”
Sada, like her partner Professor, Turo, is involved in researching Terastal Pokémon, and the phenomena of Terastallisation. She also appears to be dressed like a scientist from The Flintstones.
Pokémon Violet Professor Exclusive
Meanwhile, Violet players will be accompanied by ol’ smoothy-chops, Professor Turo. Again, the Spanish for “future” is “futuro,” and his name in the Japanese version is Futu, seemingly derived from the Latin for “future”, “futūrum.”
While Sada is dressed in cavewoman clothing, Turo is garbed in a space-age bodysuit beneath his lab coat. He too is studying the crystalline nature of Terastal Pokémon. Hmmmm, might time travel also come into this story in some way?
Image: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Outfit Exclusives
As you set out in the world of Pokémon Scarlet or Violet, you’ll discover that your own character’s clothing is determined by the version you bought. If you get Scarlet, you’ll be dressed in orange, but if you picked up Violet you’ll be decked out in purple. Both are uniforms for the school you’ll attend.
You can change your outfits in the game, however, once you find a shop to buy new clothes from.
Image: Game Freak
Pokémon Scarlet & Violet School Exclusives
Even the school you’ll attend is determined by the version you buy. Your school, where you’re taught about Pokémon, is in the largest town of Paldea, Mesagoza. However, if you get Scarlet it will have a different name, emblem and color-scheme than if you got Violet.
In Scarlet,the school is called the Naranja Academy, with an orange emblem featuring a spoked orange shape on its shield. (Naranja is, of course, Spanish for Orange.)
In Violet, you’ll instead go to the Uva Academy, where the emblem is purple, featuring some grandly displayed grapes. (And yes, Uva is Grape in Spanish.)
Funnily enough, both academies are run by the same person—Clavell—but he’ll be in orange or purple depending on the version.
And why orange and not red? Well, it’s Nintendo.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are set to reimagine other long-standing aspects of the series. Set in a region called Paldea, inspired by the IRL Iberian Peninsula, these games are fully open-world for the first time in series history. There’s four-player co-op. Gyms are back, with one leader in particular leaving many fans sexually confused. And in lieu of debatably silly features like “Mega Evolution,” some Pokémon are capable of a thing called—this is a very real word, by the way—“terastallizing,” which means they cover themselves in crystals and can change their type on the fly.
Updated: 11/18/2022, 11:15 a.m. ET: Well, Scarlet and Violet are now upon us. If you’re venturing out into the Paldea region, we wish you happy hunting. If you’re still on the fence about which version to buy or whether you even want to take the plunge into the latest Pokémon adventure, you should know that, although the gameplay fundamentals seem more than sound, Nintendo’s five-year-old hybrid console sure seems to be struggling with the game on a technical level.
New York was able to hold its biggest Comic-Con since 2019 last month, and fans certainly turned up for it; around 200,000 people went through the turnstiles between October 6-9 at the Javits Center, many of them cosplayers.
In this gallery you’ll find a collection of some of our favourite cosplay from the event, with highlights ranging from people wearing costumes to people wearing enormous costumes.
First, though, this video recap of the event by Mineralblu! And after that, clicking through the slideshow will be a collection of photos (also taken by Mineralblu), in which you’ll find each cosplayer’s character, series and social media information watermarked on each image.
THIS IS NEW YORK COMIC CON 2022 NYCC BEST COSPLAY MUSIC VIDEO BEST COSTUMES ANIME CMV NYC MANHATTAN
Studio Ghibli, The famous Japanese animation studio behind classics like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away has spent the past few days teasing a possible collaboration with Lucasfilm and Star Wars on its official Twitter. And there’s some evidence that it might be a Baby Yoda aka Grogu show based on a previous leak and a new tease.
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If you are reading Kotaku, I likely don’t need to explain Studio Ghibli or Star Wars, but let’s just pretend for a moment that you have no idea what these things are. This will just take a second, be patient. Studio Ghibli is an incredibly popular animation studio that was founded in 1985 in Tokyo, Japan. Since its creation, it’s gone on to produce beloved films, like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Meanwhile, Star Wars is a massive sci-fi franchise that was created by George Lucas in the 70s and has since grown into one of the biggest things on the planet. Its most recent show, Andor, is amazing (and also filled with cool, but easy-to-miss Easter eggs!) And these two might be working together in the not-too-distant future, based on recent tweets from both.
Yesterday, the official Studio Ghibli Twitter account tweeted out a short video showing the Lucasfilm logo and its own logo. That was it. But it was enough to get people talking and going “Hey, what’s that all about, then?” Shortly afterward, the official Star Wars Twitter account re-shared the teaser as well. This did two things. One, it killed my hopes that the anime studio was working on an Indiana Jones series, and two, it confirmed that whatever they are collabing on involves Star Wars. Now, earlier today, Studio Ghibli doubled down on the connection to the famous galaxy, far, far away with a follow-up post showing an image of Grogu, also known online as Baby Yoda. The official Star Wars account has since re-tweeted the image.
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This alone seems like solid evidence the studio is doing a Baby Yoda short or movie or animated series. But even before today’s tweet and yesterday’s tease, we knew Disney and Lucasfilm were likely working on a Grogu project of some kind. That’s thanks to a previous leak from the Italian Disney+ Twitter account earlier this month. That leak pointed toward a November 12 release date, which is coincidentally tomorrow. It’s also the three-year anniversary of the premiere for The Mandalorian, the show where Grogu first appeared.
All of this points to the very real possibility that very soon, Studio Ghibli and Lucasfilm will release a new animated Star Wars short starring Grogu. Or perhaps that leaked short has nothing to do with this project and instead, Ghibli is working on a segment for the next season of the Star Wars anime spin-off anthology series, Star Wars Visions. Time will tell…
As you may know, I’m a big ol’ Star Wars nerd. And one of my favorite things in Star Warsmedia is all the tiny references and Easter eggs embedded everywhere. But sometimes this fan service goes overboard and derails a story in a way that alienates or bores non-fans. Andor, the newest TV show set in the Star Wars universe, not only avoids this problem, but also finds perfect ways to utilize nerdy Star Wars lore without making it tedious or annoying for folks just wanting to watch a good show.
Andor, which premiered in late September on Disney+, is the latest entry in the Star Wars franchise and is set before the events of the original Star Wars film and the movie Rogue One. It follows the life of Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, as he navigates a galaxy controlled by the evil Empire. He’s not yet the rebel we know from Rogue One, but over the course of this season and presumably the next season, he will evolve into the man we met in that popular spin-off.
Disney / Lucasfilm
People across my timeline have been loving Andor. Even people who’d previously sworn off Star Wars entirely are back and enjoying every minute of the series. Many of them happily point out how the show isn’t a giant excuse to do fan service every week. But funnily enough, Andor has some of the coolest and most interesting bits of deep-cut Star Wars lore out of anything Star Wars-related in years; it’s just handled so well that most folks miss it all.
A great example comes in how the show handles Cassian’s home planet. In the first episode of the show, we learn that Cassian was born and raised on the planet Kenari. It’s newly created for Andor, which allowed showrunner Tony Gilroy more freedom to do whatever he needed with it and its people. But, technically, we already knew of Cassian’s home planet, and it wasn’t Kenari. Back when Rogue One came out, Lucasfilm released various book tie-ins. One reference tome listed Andor’s home world as Fest, an old Star Wars planet that first appeared in the game Dark Forces. So, at first, I thought the show had simply retconned that origin away. I wasn’t too annoyed by this, as I always prefer when Star Wars media focus on story over lore.
But then, in Andor episode two, we learn that Fest was a lie that Cassian and his adoptive mother told everyone to hide the truth of where he was really from, Kenari. For most viewers, that scene wasn’t that big of a deal: Cassian lied because he was trying to hide where he came from, got it. But for Star Wars nerds like me, it was a fantastic way to retcon something using Star Wars lore while still honoring a reference book from years ago. And it didn’t interfere with the show at all, allowing normal, non-Star Wars sickos to enjoy the show without rolling their eyes at some forced bit of fan service.
Lucasfilm / Star Wars Explained
Andor is filled with Star Wars lore and connections like this that it sneakily deploys in ways that make sense for general audiences, but which have deeper, interesting connections to the franchise’s decades of prior material. And unlike the last Star Wars show, the fun (but not nearly as good) Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor doesn’t get tangled up in fan service that distracts from the actual story and characters. The refs are there to find in Andor, if you care, but it’s totally fine if you just want to enjoy the thrilling ride instead.
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For example, Mon Mothma’s daughter, Lieda, isn’t a brand-new character, but instead a very deep-cut one who barely existed in the old Star Wars Extended Universe. So her popping up in the show not only brought her into canon, but was a very fun bit of fan service that didn’t stick out to most viewers.
Similarly, the kyber crystal Luthen Rael gives Cassian as payment for helping with a heist has its own subtle connection to old Star Wars lore. Sure, many viewers probably know vaguely that a kyber crystal powers lightsabers. And many also probably recalled that we previously saw Rogue One heroine Jyn Erso wearing a similar necklace. But while folks were looking at the crystal and going, “Oh that’s a thing I kind of know about…” Luthen drops one of the coolest bits of lore in the show, explaining that the crystal “celebrates the uprising against the Rakatan invaders.” That might have set off alarm bells in the heads of any fans who played Knights of the Old Republic.
That’s because the Rakatans were created for that game. They were an ancient race of super-powerful aliens who possibly invented hyperdrive and at one point controlled the galaxy as part of their Infinite Empire. Technically, they’ve been mentioned in canon before, but this is really the first big re-introduction of the species. Pondering how they could work into future Star Wars stories set far in the past has me very excited.
Speaking of video game references, in Luthen’s shop—which is chockablock with fun Easter eggs that could fill a whole separate blog—we see what appears to be a suit of Sith Stalker armor as first seen in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. That game and its main character, Starkiller, are no longer canon, and this armor popping up in Andor doesn’t change that. But it could hint that perhaps one day parts of Force Unleashed will be reintroduced into the modern Star Wars universe. I mean, if Jaxxon is canon these days, anything can happen.
But all of these deep-cut references and bits of fan service were likely never spotted by 90% of people watching Andor, even though some of them directly connect to the plot or the show’s characters. That’s an impressive feat to pull off, and based on interviews with the show’s creator, Tony Gilroy, a lot of this was included by Lucasfilm nerds and not himself. He recently told Varietythat he works closely with lore experts like Pablo Hidalgo to make sure he’s not doing anything that breaks the Star Wars universe. But for him, his real focus is on Andor’s story and its characters, not references to manuals or old video games.
“The art department will sneak in all that crap into Luthen’s gallery,” Gilroy told Variety. “I had no idea. Like, ‘Oh my God, the thing in the background!’ and people are blowing it up. That’s the art department. So many cool people work on the show. There’s a deep geekdom in Pinewood, believe me.”
That’s how it should be. If Disney wants to continue to create amazing Star Wars productions like Andor, it should bring in more creators and directors like Gilroy. People who, sure, might not be the biggest Star Wars fans in the world, but who have interesting stories to tell. Let those people create cool stuff while the nerds at Lucasfilm fill in the gaps with fan service that weirdos like me can get excited about, while never ruining the show for everyone else.
I admit, this is a hard balance to strike, and I don’t expect all future Star Wars projects to be like Andor. In fact, I would prefer a world where we get both shows like Andor, which are for everyone, and shows like Tales of the Jedi, which are good but clearly target Star Wars nerds like me. Star Wars can’t grow if it only focuses on its big fans, and Andor shows that when you expand the franchise and do something different, you not only end up pleasing longtime Star Wars nerds like me, but also reach a whole new audience that might never have cared about Star Wars in the first place. Plus, Andor is just really entertaining, so more shows like this sounds like a good thing to me.
The original Tactics Ogre proved that RPG chess was not only fun, it could also be morally ambiguous, beautifully written, and deeply compelling. Nearly 30 years later, Tactics Ogre: Reborn has managed to safely transport a masterpiece into the modern era while sprucing it up enough so that it’s still a joy to play. I was worried the remaster, with its smoothed-over pixel art and other tweaks, would tarnish what I love about the classic tactics game. Instead, I’m hooked all over again.
Tactics Ogre: Reborn, out Friday on PlayStation, PC, and Switch, is the grittier, more granular predecessor to Final Fantasy Tactics(both were directed by Yasumi Matsuno of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII acclaim). Where Final Fantasy Tactics—released in the U.S. in January 1998—focused on manipulating an over-powered job system to break the game with dual-wielding ninjas and massive summons, Tactics Ogre (which hit U.S. shores soon after despite first releasing in Japan a few years earlier) reveled in slower-moving battles of attrition where positioning and terrain matter as much as character classes. And while both offer surprisingly mature tales of class politics and the corruption of power, Tactics Ogre lets players make a handful of choices along the way and then sit with the consequences at the end of the game. It’s not as approachable as Final Fantasy Tactics, but its Realpolitik approach to war and revolution resonate as strongly as ever.
If you’re completely unfamiliar with the game and the tactical RPG subseries it hails from, Tactics Ogre spends most of its time on isometric battlefields divided into squares. Units on one side, consisting of knights, archers, wizards, dragons and other classes, fight against enemies on the other. You play as a trio of downtrodden youths trying to take back their land from neighboring occupiers, tinkering with your roster of troops and feasting on wonderfully written scenes in-between battles as dukes, kings, and other leaders decide your fate like pawns on a chessboard.
The writing in Tactics Ogre remains full of great lines and no nonsense. Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
You would have gotten most of this from the original game as well, but Reborn is a remaster of a remaster, building on the improvements that were already made in the PlayStation Portable version released in 2010. Each scene is fully voiced now, and with minimal cringe as well. While I ultimately preferred to stick with the Japanese voice acting, the English cast is surprisingly excellent and a worthwhile addition that helps add a whole new dimension and emotional subtext to the story.
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Reborn also introduces orchestral arrangements of all the original music. On paper that seemed like a neat addition, but in practice it’s transformative. As with the voice acting, it brings out a whole new level of depth in Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata’s fantastic score. Each battle feels heightened, each betrayal more sinister. The returning Wheel of Fortune system, meanwhile, let’s you revisit earlier points in the branching story.
The remaster makes a number of other changes and additions as well. Unlike in the PSP version, characters level up rather than their classes, freeing you to play around more with different party compositions and loadouts. Random encounters on the map while traveling from one story beat to another are gone. Instead, the training mode has returned where you can set your troops to spar on auto-pilot. But don’t think you can grind your way to success. A “party level” limits how far any one unit can level up until you progress further in the game.
The new Tarot cards quickly start to litter the battlefield. Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Another big departure is the tarot card system. In addition to vanquished enemies dropping green cards that permanently boost a unit’s stats, blue and red cards also randomly spawn throughout a battle. The blue ones bestow buffs like higher critical hit rates, stronger magic, or higher defense, while the red cards remove them. The card bonuses only last as long as each battle, and can swiftly turn the tide depending on who gets them first.
It’s a way to help make Tactics Ogre’s combat hit heavier and resolve more quickly, helping you dispatch an enemy in three hits rather than six (unlike, say, Fire Emblem where it almost never takes more than two). On the whole, it can help cut down on some of the game’s more tedious moments as you try to break an enemy’s hold on the high ground or take down an especially powerful boss unit (a turn do-over system and fast-forward option also help). At the same time, as a purist with a soft spot for Tactics Ogre’s slower pace and longer battles, I wish there was a way to turn it off, as you have the choice of doing with the voiceovers.
My lowkey favorite improvement in Reborn is the addition of sight lines for long range attacks. No more shooting magic into bushes!Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Most of the changes are clear improvements though. You can now scout battles ahead of time to see what units and terrain you’ll be facing and how best to counter them. You can also customize up to five battle rosters, letting you easily swap from one team to another depending on the situation. Character customization has also been streamlined, with each unit allowed to equip four items, four skills, and four magic abilities depending on their class and repertoire (character stats have also been rebalanced to scale more rewardingly). The equipped items even automatically restock from your reserves after each battle. It sounds small, but it’s a huge time saver that lets you spend more time focusing on the cool stuff rather than constantly fiddling with healing herbs and resurrection stones.
The only part of Reborn that doesn’t feel like a coup is the pixel art, which was notoriously lampooned when it first leaked online. This is the first version of the game in HD, and the sprites and environments have been blown-up to compensate. The result is a “smoothed over” look that can make things look slightly muddy or washed out. The effect is especially noticeable at close range. Zoom in and things will occasionally look, at the very least, not great. I don’t know how feasible it would have been to try and give Reborn the Octopath Traveler or Triangle StrategyHD-2D pixel art look, but I wish the game felt as beautiful to look at as it is to play and listen to (or at least included the option to revert to the old look).
Fortunately, I spent most of my five hours with the Switch version so far easily overlooking it. In motion, it’s hardly noticeable, especially when you’re busy calculating hit percentages and damage tradeoffs. As with everything else on the OLED screen, the colors really pop, and the package as a whole feels meaningfully improved from the PSP version in every other way. Some old games take you back to the past, but Reborn feels like it’s transporting Tactics Ogre into the present, where it belongs.
– Journalist and author Simon Parkin travels to Tokyo, Japan to speak with Fumito Ueda (Shadow of the Colossus, Ico,The Last Guardian), exploring the themes and philosophies behind both his iconic games and his working practice.
– Grace Curtis explores the history of early web games with a focus on Nitrome, a British independent games studio that started out making online browser games.
– Rodney Greenblat (PaRappa the Rapper) is interviewed by Kyle Bosman about his approach to both his fine art and character design, and how he hopes his work inspires joy in others.
– Tim Schafer (Psychonauts,Grim Fandango) talks to Ben Bertoli about how to manage your outlook and take care of your mind when creating and working on videogames.
– Journalist and author Matt Leone chronicles the early history of Street Fighter and the birth of fighting game combo analysis in Japan.
While the features have been (and look in this case to be) fantastic, one of the big selling points of the magazine has been its production. The art leaps off the page, and for this issue in particular the fancier edition of the Last Guardian-themed cover is going all out:
The Special Edition of Issue 3 features a different colour pallette and a special thermo-chromatic ink layer, allowing you to banish the darkness and reveal Trico underneath by simply touching the cover with your hands. Touch and tactility is such a prominent concept in the games of Ueda and his team, so it felt fitting to have that referenced in the cover with this unique production process
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If you want to order a copy, you can get it—and previous issues—here.
Sadly, it appears Nintendo is now just utterly helpless to leaks. So many first-party games from the last couple of years has found its way online—either being streamed, or even ripped and playable on PC—a week or more ahead of its release. Joining them, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has already seen a huge number of leaks in the last few days, but right now as I write, the entire game is being livestreamed to an audience of over a thousand.
Nintendo has been dashing about trying to put out fires all week, as more and more information about Scarlet and Violet has appeared online, including spoilers for how the trio of new starters will evolve. Thanks to the need to ship physical copies to stores (both online and brick-n-mortar) ahead of release, ne’er-do-wells within are getting hold of the game in advance, then grabbing for a moment of internet fame with spoilers. But now things have gotten a whole lot worse, with an hours-long stream of someone playing the entire game.
Look, it’s up to you, and you can obviously go watch it on Trovo (Tencent’s eerily familiar version of Twitch), but I really wouldn’t. I’ve had it on to verify this story, and already seen a starter’s later evolution that I really didn’t want to know, and seen a whole swathe of new (but officially unrevealed) Pokémon. Those are all surprises I’ll no longer get when my copy arrives on the 18th.
Honestly, seeing how Quaxly—or Sergeant Duck to give him his proper name—evolves, I’ve been put off the starter I’d planned to play with. That sucks. And yeah, I can confirm those previous leaks based on some tiny Pokédex pixel images are accurate.
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Almost 12 hours into this stream, whoever the deeply unpleasantly named “reeeetardkun” might be must surely be beginning to tire. But not before pretty much every secret from the game has found its way out there. I’m not reporting them here, although god knows it’s going to be hard for all of us to avoid all manner of secrets over the next seven days.
It’s worth noting I also saw the game completely bugging out on the stream, where every location became just a white screen but for pop-up information. Quitting and reloading fixed it, but yeah, that doesn’t bode enormously well. However, Nintendo has made it known the game is getting a 1GB day one patch, so maybe such issues will be removed by launch?
Presumably Trovo is being used for this, because Nintendo would have contacts at Twitch to get this shut down hours ago. With 11 hours of the game out there now, managing to stamp this one out will be pretty futile. And, you know, perspective, it’s a video game: It’s very bad for Nintendo, but we just need to look away. And as much as I’d love to get an idea of lots of new Pokémon, I’d rather have some surprises in a week’s time.
We’ve featured German cosplayer Maul a ton of times on Kotaku, maybe more than any other individual cosplayer, and there’s a very good reason for that: just look at these photos.
Halo Infinite Winter Update’s New Multiplayer Maps
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God of War Ragnarök’s First Nine Minutes
Today 4:04PM
While he’s best known for his recurring takes on Geralt of Rivia, ranging from “being Geralt” to “being Geralt skateboarding in LA”, Maul has also done a ton of work—both paid (like this, this one’s an ad for PlayStation) and personal—on series like Dishonored, Cyberpunk and Metal Gear Solid as well.
Today, though, we’re looking at his latest shoot, an incredible take on God of War’s Kratos for the release of Ragnarok that sees Maul (and his team) nailing just about everything, from the costume to the weathered leather to the bodypaint to the muscles to the beard to…more muscles (which, despite Maul’s considerable size IRL, are in this case a suit)
Yes, the axe is cool. Sure, the fights are tons of fun. And I definitely enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny of the large worlds you get to visit. But what kept me glued to my PS5 for nearly 40 hours was the story of a son becoming a man and a father trying to figure out how he feels about that. I probably could have enjoyed this story a tad more with about half as many puzzles and skill menus, but even so, I found myself smiling, feeling satisfied, as the credits rolled. As I said at the start, God of War Ragnarök is very good.
The first time the internet saw DCU Superman star Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia in Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher, it howled in collective laughter over the terrible wig. Four years later, fans are losing their minds that Hollywood’s leading himbo won’t be reprising the role after season three ends. One obvious explanation for why is that Cavill has signed on to shoot a new Superman movie, but fans think the real reason Cavill is leaving is that he’s tired of fighting with Netflix to keep The Witcher true to its literary source material.
The surprising news of Cavill’s impending departure was shared yesterday in a statement by Netflix that also announced Liam Hemsworth of Hunger Games fame would be taking over the role in season four. “As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam’s take on this most fascinating and nuanced of men,” Cavill was quoted as saying. “Liam, good sir, this character has such a wonderful depth to him, enjoy diving in and seeing what you can find.”
While many were disappointed that The Man From U.N.C.L.E. would no longer be caught growling “Roach” at horses in future seasons, Witcher fans took the news especially badly. Subreddits for the books, games, and Netflix series blew up with disbelief, frustration, and memes, while conspiracy theories got passed around on Twitter that Cavill had been more or less forced out over creative differences with a production that has at times taken generous liberties with Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s original novels. Certain parts of the Witcher fandom have always had a toxic relationship with the show, fuming over certain casting choices and plot deviations, and Cavill’s departure is now being taken as validation of every criticism they’ve ever had.
To support their theories, fans point to a breadcrumb trailof previous interview quotes by Cavill about his desire to keep Netflix’s Geralt true to the one originally put to paper in the pages of fantasy magazine Fantastyka back in 1986. Less than a year ago the actor said he told the Hollywood Reporter he was “absolutely” committed to the show’s seven-season plan “as long as we can keep telling great stories which honor [author Andrzej] Sapkowski’s work.”
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During the media tour around season two’s release last year, Cavill spoke repeatedly about campaigning to bring more three-dimensionality to Geralt, noting that in addition to a brutish monster slayer he’s also wise, thoughtful, and an “amateur philosopher.” “This season, I really wanted to make sure that we represented the book’s Geralt more accurately, and that we saw him speak more,” he told Total Film at the time. “I pushed really, really hard for that.”
Then there was showrunner Lauren Hissrich’s own comments about Cavill’s preparation for season two. “A lot of the notes he was sending to me were about Geralt’s dialogue—could he, first of all, say more,” she told Hollywood Reporter. “Everybody came out of season one laughing and loving Geralt’s fuming. But Henry was saying that when you read the books you spend a lot of time in Geralt’s head. So how can we put that on the page?”What about Cavill’s aspirations for the future of the series? “I’m a huge fan of the books and staying loyal to them, and it’s about making sure that story happens without too much in the way of diversions or side things going on to muddy the waters,” he said during a Netflix Geeked conversation last year. Adding fuel to the fire was a recent interview with Beau DeMayo, a former producer on The Witcher who is now running X-Men ‘97 on Disney+, where he said some writers “actively disliked” and even “mocked” the source material.
Screenshot: Netflix
Some fans’ takeaways from these soundbytes has been that while Hissrich was focused on making the show what she wanted it to be, Cavill was the only one interested in trying to keep it grounded in the original version of the characters. This comes in the context of long Reddit threads like this one where fans have detailed all of the ways season two was different from the books, with fears that season three, not set to air until the summer of 2023, might include even larger departures.
While the theory is a compelling one when collapsed into a couple of viral tweets, the show’s place within the larger fandom has always been more complicated than that. Hissrich was temporarily chased off Twitter prior to season one’s release when racist fans petitioned Netflix to only let a white woman play the lead role of Ciri, Geralt’s adopted daughter. Then there were those on the edge of the fandom with no knowledge of or interest in the grimdark fantasy series until Netflix spent tens of millions bringing it to life. “Book purists are hurting the experience for new fans,” wrote one user on the show’s subreddit last year. Then there are fans of CD Projekt Red’s Witcher video game trilogy which takes huge liberties with the storytelling, and has effectively created its own parallel lore.
Whether Cavill was a purist on set is almost beside the point. His role in season two clearly did little to prevent some of the narrative departures fans took the biggest issue with. But he was clearly the glue holding the show’s disparate fandoms together. The fact that he loves PC gaming and painting Warhammer miniatures in his free time, and obviously was a big fan of Sapkowski’s books, gave him huge street cred with even the worst diehard Witcher fans. Normies and newcomers loved him too, not because he’s a pedant when it comes to the lore but because he’s a charismatic presence that did, in the end, manage to combine tenderness, ruthlessness, and a morbid wit into something deeper than his Halloween Spirit costume initially suggested. “I think the glue that held it together really was Henry Cavill as Geralt,” former Kotaku senior critic Harper Jay said during a 2018 VG chat about the first season.
With that glue gone, The Witcher season four has its work cut out for it with the circumstances around Cavill’s leaving dogging it at every turn. Whether Hemsworth is up to the task or not, the news at least comes with season three already wrapped. Fans will get one last chance to return to that world with Cavill as an anchor. I’m sure it will all go fine, and not stoke even more conspiratorial speculation over creative differences.
Today, Netflix announced that The Witcher will be back for a fourth season. However, it wasn’t all good news, as the streamer also confirmed that Henry Cavill will not be returning for season 4. Instead, Liam Hemsworth will be the new monster slayer, Geralt of Rivia.
Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the popular Witcher books first started airing in 2019 and quickly exploded in popularity, with many praising Henry Cavill’s stoic but charming take on the white-haired witcher himself, Geralt. Since that first season, The Witcher has become a bonafide franchise for Netflix, leading to more seasons, anime prequels, movies, and even a child-friendly spin-off. But the star of the original series won’t be sticking around as the fantasy franchise grows.
In a tweet posted earlier today, Netflix confirmed that Cavill will be stepping away from the role after season three of the Witcher airs…sometime in the future. Starting in season four, Liam Hemsworth will be joining the “Witcher family” and will wear the white wig and carry the cool swords as Geralt moving forward.
“My journey as Geralt of Rivia has been filled with both monsters and adventures, and alas, I will be laying down my medallion and my swords for Season 4,” said Cavill in a statement shared by Netflix.
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A gift for literally everybody. Gifts under $20, $10, and even $5. It’s Wish, the catch-all shop for all of the above.
“As with the greatest of literary characters, I pass the torch with reverence for the time spent embodying Geralt and enthusiasm to see Liam’s take on this most fascinating and nuanced of men,” continued Cavill, “Liam, good sir, this character has such a wonderful depth to him, enjoy diving in and seeing what you can find.”
Hemsworth, a Witcher fan himself, also shared a statement about the surprising news, saying that he’s been a fan of Cavill’s take on the character for years and that he was “inspired” by his performance and what he brought to the character.
“I may have some big boots to fill, but I’m truly excited to be stepping into The Witcher world,” said Hemsworth.
The initial reaction online has been…not great! Many fans are confused and upset to see Cavill leave the role. And while it’s likely he’s hanging up the swords and the medallion to replace it with a red cape and tights as he returns to the DCEU film franchise as Superman, I assume many Witcher fans will be saddened to see the nerdy actor leave the popular show. But hey, with all that DC money he can probably build an even cooler PC!
It’s very easy to look back on the last 25 years of The Simpsons and write it off as being rubbish because, well, for the most part it has been exactly that. But sometimes, like the sun shining through for an hour between passing storms, it can still get its shit together, and the upcoming tribute to Death Note looks like one of those rare occasions.
It’s part of the show’s next Treehouse of Horror Halloween compilation, and will give The Simpsons a full anime makeover for one of the episode’s instalments. You can see it in action in this short video below, which introduces Lisa as the recipient of the Death Note (or, as it’s called here, the Death Tome):
Some screenshots have also been released, giving us a good look at anime Homer and Marge as well:
Smart light it up Can display up to 57 colors at one time, have an incredible range of combinations, can react to your music, be shaped as you like using the segments, and work with most voice assistants.
Image: The Simpsons
Image: The Simpsons
If your first thought was “wow, that looks a lot better than I was expecting”, you are not alone! But there’s a very good reason this looks so authentic to the source material: this segment has been animated by Korean studio DR Movie, who have a long history of helping out behind the scenes on various American and Japanese properties, ranging from The Animatrix to Justice League to, most importantly in this case, the Death Note anime series itself.
The episode will air on October 30, and will be the second of three segments. The other two will be a Babadook homage starring Marge and a Westworld parody. Which is weird, given The Simpsons has already done a Westworld thing, one that lasted an entire episode and is one of the series’ all-time greats, but I guess 1994 was long enough ago (and the modern HBO series so different) that they feel like they can do it all over again and newer viewers won’t even notice.
Mobile game Disney Twisted Wonderland sparked controversy when it revealed a new character this weekend. The character is based on Claude Frollo from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Fans have called him racist as Frollo was extremely racist in the original Disney movie. Here’s the complicated part: Twisted Wonderland characters aren’t actually the same as their original inspirations. It’s all very messy, but we’ll get through this. I promise.
Twisted Wonderland is a gacha rhythm game where players spend gems to roll for student characters based on Disney villains such as Maleficent, Jafar, and Ursula. These students aren’t actually the villains themselves, but they take inspiration from the villains’ visual designs, movie dialogue, and narrative themes. So you get a Kingdom Hearts looking anime boy acting like a controlling jerk and yelling “OFF WITH YOUR HEAD” whenever someone displeases him. Rollo is an event character, but he’s also a dorm leader. So it’s not apparent yet whether or not players will be able to roll for him in the gacha.
According to Twisted Wonderland lore, the villains did exist at some point in the past (Frollo is portrayed as a heroic statue on the academy grounds), though they’re known for positive qualities rather than the crimes they may have committed in the movies. So there’s some narrative distance between Rollo and Frollo.
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But there’s concern among some that Frollo prejudiced in ways that are hard for some players to ignore. While the Queen of Hearts has very milquetoast lines, Claude Frollo is known for calling a Romani character a racial slur and claiming that her people are “not capable of real love.” Yikes. All Disney villains have terrible qualities. But some of their storylines approach real-life bigotries closer than others.
While one fan translator claimed Rollo’s personality is “nice” rather than genocidal, others didn’t think that his canonical personality mattered. They were concerned that Frollo was too bigoted to be used in a game where everyone is a beautiful anime boy. While the original Disney movie contextualizes the extent of Claude Frollo’s villainy, the characters in Twisted Wonderland are portrayed as soft, misunderstood, and sympathetic.
While the overall reception to the character seems positive, there are also many quote retweets expressing disgust that Twisted Wonderland players are simping for Rollo. I’m going to remind everyone that The Hunchback of Notre Dame came out in 1996. Many young people have never seen that movie, which is part of the problem. Media is recycled over time. It retains some context and loses others, so people have totally different exposure levels to Notre Dame while it’s still easy to assume that everyone has had the same experience.
In the meantime, some Twisted Wonderland players are just trying to head off the horny simps:
Silent Hill fans can finally—finally!—rejoice. Konami has confirmed that, after accidentally leaking some details earlier today, the beloved survival horror game Silent Hill 2 will make a return as a timed PlayStation exclusive, alongside a bevy of other Silent Hill projects currently in the works. You can watch the stream via the embed below.
The stream opened with that iconic shot of Silent Hill 2 protagonist James Sunderland staring into the mirror, wondering if his wife Mary is waiting for him. James then walks through the foggy streets of a town before we see a cinematic montage of familiar sights impressively rendered in modern graphics. The trailer was short but confirmed two things: Silent Hill 2 is available to wishlist on PS5 right now, and it will absolutely be locked on PlayStation (and PC) for 12 months after launch.
Konami
Konami also talked a bit more about the other projects in development right now. We saw a glimpse of Silent Hill Towerfall, developed by Observation and Stories Untold creators No Code. Details are scarce on this project, but if you’re familiar with No Code’s work, then you can expect some “deep psychological horror,” according to the studio’s creative director John McKellen.
Another project Konami showed off was Return to Silent Hill, the upcoming film directed by Christophe Gans (the writer-director of 2006’s Silent Hill) which “tells the story of a young man” coming back to the town only to find nightmares.
There was some chat about Silent Hill merch like shirts and statues, before Konami jumped to a third project, an apparent “whole new experience.” Titled Silent Hill Ascension, the project is a “live, real-time interactive series” that sounds akin to Until Dawn. You can change outcomes, be part of the scenes, and shape the Silent Hill canon. But if you fuck up, you fuck up because there is, apparently, no reset button. It’s due in 2023.
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Screencap from the Silent Hill f trailer.Screenshot: Konami / Kotaku
The livestream wrapped with one final announcement of a completely new Silent Hill game, titled Silent Hill f. Serene footage showed a young girl exploring a foggy town; slowly, invasive tendrils make them themselves known, followed by very colorful, all-consuming fungal growths. The brief trailer ends on a shot of the girl’s now-infested corpse, just as its face sloughs off. Silent Hill f is developed by Neobards Entertainment, with story by Ryukishi07, creature and character design by kera, and produced by former Nintendo developer Motoi Okamoto.
This remake of Silent Hill 2 has been rumored for a hot minute now. Back in May 2022, screenshots purporting to be related to the franchise started making the rounds online, with Layers of Fear developer Bloober Team attached to the project. Bloober Team announced a month later a totally separate horror game within the Layers of Fear universe that appears to be a reboot of sorts. However, Bloober Team is now leading development on Silent Hill 2 Remake, with Konami serving as the game’s publisher.
While Silent Hill 2 Remake may be a PlayStation exclusive for 12 months after it launches, the game will also be available on PC. Sorry, Xbox folks.
Silent Hill 2 first came out in 2001 for the PlayStation 2. It put the new console’s horsepower to good use, rendering notoriously thick, rolling fog that cranked the atmosphere to previously unknown heights. The plot had protagonist James Sunderland visiting the doomed town after receiving a letter from his previously deceased wife, Mary. As you can imagine, following the trail leads nowhere good, and we gradually learn that Sunderland is a very, very broken man.
Various sequels followed over the years, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but Silent Hill 2 went down as a particular fan favorite for its fantastic atmosphere, terrifying situations, and psychological depth. It also served as the first appearance of the now-beloved antagonist Pyramid Head.
After years of very little new or exciting Silent Hill content, it looks like fans finally be feasting like it’s 2001 all over again.
If you went to get your ass yeeted by Lady Dimitrescu this past weekend only to have Resident Evil Village crash instead, you’re not alone. A recent update to the PC version triggered a bug that’s crashing the game for many PC players on Steam.
Earlier today, Capcom made a post on the official Resident Evil Twitter account apologizing for the inconvenience of the crashes and stating that it is currently working on a fix. Players on Steam report that, upon starting Village, they are greeted with a message saying their data is “incompatible” followed by a recommendation to restart the game, essentially locking them out.
In a Steam forum post, player FluffyQuack speculated that the reason ViIlage is now crashing on PCs is thanks to newly added code that checks the game for modifications / anomalies and ceases to run when any are found. The flawed update comes just ahead of the launch of its next major DLC, dubbed the Winters’ Expansion. Among other additions, the Winters’ Expansion, which launches next week, will add a new single-player episode and augment the score attack-style battle mode called “The Mercenaries” with four new playable characters, including the now slightly-more-diminutive Lady D, Heisenberg, and boulder-punching aficionado Chris Redfield.
While players await a fix from Capcom, FluffyQuack already workshopped a makeshift workaround that seems to allow the base game to run again, with the caveat of not being able to use any of its DLC.
The Winters’ Expansion updates will launch on October 28 and be available both separately, and as a bundle with the original game known as Resident Evil Village Gold Edition.
