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Tag: INZONE

  • July 4th Gaming Deals That Would Make The Founders Proud

    July 4th Gaming Deals That Would Make The Founders Proud

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    The 4th of July is a day for jingoistic mythmaking and summer merriment. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it than by grilling food, watching things explode, and ordering a bunch of cool stuff online that you totally don’t need but will still be really awesome to have.

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    Commerce was a key driver of dissatisfaction with the crown when a bunch of American colonies originally told England to fuck off, so it makes sense that shopping remains a core ritual at the heart of celebrating the nation’s founding. Independence Day is a great time to buy a car or a refrigerator, but you’re not here for any of that. Instead, I’ve rounded up an eclectic mix of 4th of July gaming deals and culturally adjacent curios that happen to be discounted right now. Check them out. It’s what George Washington would have wanted.

    Best Nintendo Switch Game Sales

    The eShop is currently running a few sales through July 14, including the Recollection Collection Sale and Devolver Digital Summer Sale. Capcom also has a publisher sale running through July 7. There’s a wide-array of great games for cheap. Here are some of the highlights:

    • Hogwarts Legacy: $30 (50 percent off)
    • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge: $16.24 (35 percent off)
    • Sonic Mania: $8 (60 percent off)
    • Persona 5 Royale: $30 (50 percent off)
    • Dave the Diver: $14 (30 percent off)
    • Unicorn Overlord: $42 (30 percent off)
    • Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy: $16 (60 percent off)
    • BioShock: The Collection: $10 (80 percent off)
    • Terra Nil: $15 (40 percent off)
    • Pepper Grinder: $10 (33 percent off)
    • Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection: $30 (50 percent off)
    • Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers: $20 (50 percent off)
    • Capcom Fighting Collection: $16 (60 percent off)
    • Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection: $10 (66 percent off)
    • The Messenger: $5 (75 percent off)

    Best PS5 Game Sales

    It’s been back-to-back-to-back sales on the PlayStation Store for a while now between Play Days and the Mid-Year sale. Now there’s another with the Essential Picks sale running through July 17. Many of the above Switch game deals are also available for the PlayStation versions, as well as these additional ones:

    • Dragon’s Dogma 2: $56 (20 percent off)
    • Persona 3 Reload: $49 (30 percent off)
    • System Shock: $28 (30 percent off)
    • Batman Arkham Collection: $6 (90 percent off)
    • Nier: Automata: $16 (60 percent off)
    • Castle Crashers Remastered: $3 (80 percent off)
    • Octopath Traveler II: $36 (40 percent off)
    • Like a Dragon: Ishin!: $24 (60 percent off)
    • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Deluxe: $45 (50 percent off)
    • Dead Space Deluxe: $28 (65 percent off)
    • Far Cry 6 Deluxe: $20 (75 percent off)
    • Diablo II: Resurrected: $13 (67 percent off)

    Best Xbox Sales

    Not to be left out, a bunch of Xbox games are currently discounted, too. Many of the Switch and PS5 game deals also apply to the Xbox versions, as well as these other cheap games worth a shout-out:

    • Hades: $12.50 (50 percent off)
    • Dead Rising 2: $5 (75 percent off)
    • Monster Hunter Rise: $25.50 (65 percent off)
    • Resident Evil Village: $20 (60 percent off)
    • Aragami 2: $10 (75 percent off)
    • Axiom Verge 1 & 2: $10.50 (70 percent off)
    • Flinthook: $7.50 (50 percent off)
    • Metro: Last Light Redux: $3 (85 percent off)
    • Wasteland 3: $8 (80 percent off)

    Best PC Game Sales

    If you haven’t already looked through our Steam Summer Sale overview you should do that, as there’s a lot of surprisingly steep discounts. So instead, I’ll take this opportunity to highlight a bunch of really good Steam Deck compatible game sales. The PC gaming handhelds themselves are 15 percent off right now. Here’s what you can play on them:

    • Elden Ring: $42 (30 percent off)
    • Cyberpunk 2077: $30 (50 percent off)
    • Stardew Valley: $9 (40 percent off)
    • Slay the Spire: $8.50 (66 percent off)
    • Dead Cells: $12.50 (50 percent off)
    • Hollow Knight: $7.50 (50 percent off)
    • Halo: The Master Chief Collection: $10 (75 percent off)
    • Marvel’s Midnight Suns: $15 (75 percent off)
    • Risk of Rain 2: $8.25 (67 percent off)
    • Vampire Survivors: $3.50 (25 percent off)
    • Balatro: $13.50 (10 percent off)

    Best TV Sales

    There are hundreds of cheap TVs to pick from, but I have two for you that should get the job done at either end of your price range. If you’re content to game and stream shows on a budget TV like I am, then Best Buy is currently selling 55-inch TCL Q5 series 4K displays for just $300 (33 percent off). If you want something more fancy, you’re also in luck. While you could spend thousands on a truly top-of the line TV with blacks as dark as an event horizon, you could also splurge on a 48-inch LG OLED. Best Buy is also selling those for just $800 (almost 50 percent off the sticker price).

    Best Used Game Sales

    GameStop is currently running a buy 2, get 1 free on all used games, including its (very limited) retro collection. It’s great way to catch up on bargain bin stuff you might have never gotten to (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Watch Dogs 2, GTA V) as well as more recent stuff that hasn’t dropped in value yet. For example, you could play some of 2024’s biggest games so far like Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and Tekken 8 and save roughly $50 in the process. Have fun mixing and matching. Just make sure they actually have used copies of the games in stock.

    The Best Of The Rest

    Here’s where we have fun with a rapid-fire round of some other neat deals:

            

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    Ethan Gach

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  • Pro Street Fighter V Player Calls Out Major Tourney’s ‘Shitty’ Setup

    Pro Street Fighter V Player Calls Out Major Tourney’s ‘Shitty’ Setup

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    The Evolution Championship Series, typically referred to as just EVO, wrapped up its Japanese circuit this weekend. There was a lot to get hyped for during the tournament, including the epic Guilty Gear Strive sets and the nail-biting Tekken 7 matches. However, one thing that most competitors weren’t stoked about was the laggy setup, which the event’s organizers have admitted on Twitter “produced a flawed competitor experience throughout the tournament.”

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    A spin-off of the main tournament that first kicked off in January 2018, EVO Japan is a multi-day event centered around the fighting game community. A plethora of popular and recently dropped brawlers are playable there, from The King of Fighters XV to Melty Blood: Type Lumina to Street Fighter V. Alongside these games are an assortment of their best competitors, including top Guilty Gear Strive player Gobou, Tekken 7 pros Arslan Ash and Rangchu, and goated Virtua Fighter 5 player Tonchan. Folks were ready for three days of throwing digital hands, and as a viewer, I can tell you it was exciting to watch all the wild combo strings and even wilder redemption arcs, like pro Tekken 7 player Meo-IL clawing his way from the losers bracket to the grand finals. But as things moved fast, the setup couldn’t keep up and monitors seemingly lagged behind in displaying the gameplay—a particularly serious problem in a genre where virtual life-or-death reactions and vital inputs are the stuff of milliseconds.

    Fed up, Punk calls out ‘shitty’ tournament setup

    The setup issues appeared to be widespread. Both Tekken players Arslan Ash and Rangchu noted the laggy issues with the monitors, while Guilty Gear Strive pro Jonathan Tene mentioned that the venue had “only one setup” per pool. Other attendees, from Guilty Gear player Romolla to Tekken pro Knee, complained about EVO Japan’s setup as well. But the issues were most pronounced during an important Street Fighter V match between Momochi and Punk, which was stalled for almost an hour as Punk had a display replaced because of the latency problems between the monitor and the PlayStation 4.

    G/O Media may get a commission

    Punk, who is a prolific fighting game player, was making his way through the Top 8 losers bracket. After battling almost 400 other competitors in Street Fighter V: Championship Edition, Punk could see the first-place trophy and roughly $7,600 in front of him. He just had to put Momochi, a two-time EVO champion, in the dirt first. Things were pretty evenly matched between the two, even though Punk’s Vega lost the first match against Momochi’s Cody. It was at this point that Punk called over an event staffer to chat about the latency issues. After testing out some buttons, the staffer concluded that a new monitor was in order. Nearly 40 minutes and a new display later, Punk ended up losing to Momochi, who played as Karin for the second match. Punk was clearly unhappy and,, as seen in this fan recording, stormed off the stage. The winner of Street Fighter V’s EVO Japan competition was Oil King.

    evo2kvids

    On Twitter, Punk popped off on EVO Japan, calling the monitor issues “fucking annoying” and the tournament itself “shitty.” He later explained that he’d spent “over $2000” only to be met with what he felt was an unacceptable tournament setup in which the match’s result was not in his control. He finished off by apologizing to “all Japanese fans” for not playing his best, something he promised just before beginning his match against Momochi.

    EVO says the issue was the stage and stream, not the monitors

    In the wake of competitors like Punk discoursing over monitors on Twitter,, the official EVO account acknowledged that the event suffered from “a flawed competitor experience” that resulted in an imbalance it promised would “never happen again.” The tournament’s general manager, Richard Thiher, quote-tweeted EVO, saying that the stage setup “negatively impacted players” across games. However, in that admission, Thiher wanted to make one thing clear: it wasn’t the monitors.

    “It is important to confirm that Punk and others were right, the Evo Japan 2023 stage setup negatively impacted players,” Thiher tweeted on April 2. “It is also necessary to confirm it was the stage and stream design itself, not the INZONE monitors. We will prove that to you at other events this year.”

    Kotaku reached out to EVO and Punk for comment.

    Despite the technical issues and drama, EVO Japan was still a blast this year. There’s nothing like watching talented, professional players do incredibly unimaginable things in games, let alone during the stress of a tournament. However, fighting games being what they are, it’s essential that competitors be able to play in an environment where the hardware, displays, and everything else are up to the task, as anything less will inevitably hamper play. With EVO returning in August at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay, there’s still a few months to fix things up and prove that, as Thiher said, the problem wasn’t with the monitors.

     

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    Levi Winslow

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  • Video Game Gear: 10 Things We Got In 2022 That We Now Can’t Live Without

    Video Game Gear: 10 Things We Got In 2022 That We Now Can’t Live Without

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    What do you mean you don’t know what this is? Isn’t it obvious?

    What do you mean you don’t know what this is? Isn’t it obvious?
    Image: Impact Acoustics / Kotaku / LUMIKK555 (Shutterstock)

    2022 was the year I decided to get serious about my retrogaming setup. I was tired of having a 104lb CRT dominating half my computer desk and a PlayStation 2, MiSTer, and whatever other consoles I was currently interested in always in peripheral vision. After a bit of thought I concluded that the TV and all the consoles would be better off on a wheeled cart. A retro cart, if you would. It could live in my closet, or be wheeled out to wherever seemed fun. So I started speccing that out.

    The best form factor ended up having two lower shelves—for the consoles, a smaller TATE-friendly/PAL-compatible PVM-1354Q CRT a friend had recently sold me, and bookshelf speakers—with the big-ass 29” TV up on the third, top tier. Both CRTs could accept RGB or YPbPr/component video…which to standardize on? Component seemed easier for a couple reasons, so I went with that. Then I just needed a switcher to not only flip between MiSTer, PS2, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Wii, and Xbox, but to route any of those sources to either of the two screens.

    That’s six in, two out. I wanted optical audio switching, too, for MiSTer, Xbox, and possibly PS2. Combined, those requirements take us far beyond the feature set of any basic switcher you’ll find on Amazon or Ali these days. Thus I turned to the bright, shining past of the mid-aughts, when component video adoption peaked and specialty A/V products catered to the more esoteric YPbPr-wrangling needs of the era’s home theater enthusiasts.

    A few promising candidates surfaced. One high-end mid-2000s switcher was very fancy indeed and could actually transcode between analog and optical audio (wow!). But ultimately I was won over by the still-fancy but slightly more modest Impact Acoustics Deluxe Component Video / Digital Audio 6 In / 2 Out Matrix Switch, aka the “40697″. You can see it above. Not only can it route those six inputs to either screen, it can output to both screens simultaneously…the same source, or two different sources. Oh dear, am I blushing?

    After a week or two I managed to snag a NOS (new old stock) one on eBay, and it proved just as performant as hoped: Any console on any display is now just a button-push away. The cart project is still in progress as I seek a working Xbox, look into appropriate Wii hax, and transition to a new display up top (kinda wishing I had gone with RGB now, actually!) but I’ve already been enjoying having all my beloved old games in a single, self-contained, no-compromises tower of power. Even got a beanbag! Hell yeah.

    Alexandra Hall, Senior Editor

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    Claire Jackson

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