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The Pokémon Company held a new Pokémon Presents showcase to talk about upcoming projects in the series. If you missed the show, you can catch the VOD right here, but if you just want to know the highlights, read on.
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Kenneth Shepard
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Play it on: Nintendo DS (but there are similar games on many platforms)
Current goal: See if it can stump me
In the final days of the Neo Geo Pocket Color’s brief, beautiful life I imported several of the final English-translated games from the UK, and among them was an unassuming cart called Picture Puzzle. Little did I know it would be my gateway into the world of nonograms, a type of logic puzzle in which you deduce the layouts of dots on a grid based on numerical clues, eventually forming a picture. It was love at first furrow.
Though I got my fill of these games over the next few years, I still enjoy the way they scratch my brain, and there’s a near-limitless number of them available for Nintendo handhelds. So it was that I loaded Nintendo’s Picross DS onto my DSi XL this week and once again started deciphering the dots.
I don’t even remember if I’ve played this one before, but as long as the UI is good, and it is in the Nintendo ones, most any nonogram game will do. (Picross DS has some nice music, but stick with the basic blue-on-white color scheme, as many of the alt ones are eye-rending.) One thing I wonder, and I usually drift away before finding out, is if a given nonogram game, in its later stages, will depart from purely logic-based puzzles and start to require—I shudder just typing this—guessing.
I remember feeling some of the late-game Picture Puzzle grids did, but I was young and inexperienced. Even now it’s possible there exist some advanced, logic-based solving techniques that yet elude me. Perhaps this time I’ll stick with Picross DS, which I understand maxes out at monstrous 25×20 grids, long enough to see just how difficult it can really get. — Alexandra Hall
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Alexandra Hall
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Nintendo dropped its first quarter financial results on August 3, with the company revealing that it’s having a record-breaking year so far thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and The Super Marios Bros. Movie.
Read More: The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom: The Kotaku Review
In the earnings report, the company detailed just how profitable its products have been as of late. Tears of the Kingdom, for example, the follow-up to 2017’s Breath of the Wild, sold 18.51 million units just between its May 12 launch and June 30, roughly a month and a half. That’s an impressive feat, and one Nintendo noted was largely driven by folks who had played Link’s 2017 outing. Tears of the Kingdom was so successful, in fact, that it not only propelled the company’s first-party sales to reach their “highest level ever” for a first quarter, but it also drove hardware sales. More on that in a bit, though.
“The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which was released on May 12, has made a major contribution to Q1 sales in the current environment, in which we see widespread adoption of Nintendo Switch hardware and continued play engagement by many consumers,” Nintendo said. “Sell-through of this one title constitutes approximately half of the first-party software sold this fiscal year. Consumers who played the previous entry, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have been the primary driver, but as the weeks have passed, we have seen that a growing percentage of purchases are being made by consumers who have not yet played that title.”
Moving on to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the company said 168.1 million people worldwide watched the animated film as of July 30 and its global box-office revenue raked in $1.349 billion. That’s wild. What’s wilder, however, is that the Universl Pictures-distributed film drove sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which added 1.67 million sales to the tens of millions it has already sold.
This brings us to hardware sales. The company noted that the entire Nintendo Switch family had an increased 13.9 percent sell-through rate year-on-year, with the OLED model carrying most of that weight, though the OG Switch and Switch Lite are still selling well despite a slight slowdown in recent months. In the end, the handheld-console hybrid sold 3.91 million units in this quarter alone. This is a mega-popular system, y’all, and its recent popularity is largely thanks to Tears of the Kingdom.
Read More: 9 Burning Questions We Have After Finishing Tears Of The Kingdom
To cap all this off, the company said net sales for the first quarter of this fiscal year increased by 50 percent to 461.3 billion yen (or about $3.2 billion USD), increasing overall profits by 82.4 percent to 185.4 billion yen (or approximately $1.3 billion USD). So, yeah, Nintendo is absolutely killing it right now.
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Levi Winslow
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In the words of Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat, opposites attract. Perhaps that kernel of wisdom can explain the recent announcement that Final Fantasy XIV—an epic, fantasy MMORPG—is crossing over with Fall Guys—a colorful, small-scale battle royale—in a future update.
Final Fantasy XIV was a giant disaster when it first launched in 2010. However, following a complete shutdown of the original version in 2012, FFXIV was reworked into a better game known as Realm Reborn in August 2013, which was received much better by fans and critics. Since then, the game has received numerous updates and expansions, becoming one of the most popular MMOs in the world. And in the near future, the world of FFXIV will include Fall Guys content, for some odd reason.
The odd news was announced in Las Vegas by FFXIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida—known online as Yoshi P—during the first day of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest 2023 on July 28. While the team didn’t release any videos or trailers of the Fall Guys content coming to the game, some screenshots were shared that show obstacle courses familiar to anyone who has played Epic’s popular game show-like battle royale.
“These warriors of light are having a bit of a different time than usual,” joked Yoshida on stage during the keynote.
According to the producer and director, the new content will support up to 24 players at once and is currently in development. This new Fall Guys-inspired content won’t be added randomly to missions or in the open world, but will instead be added to the preexisting Golden Saucer, an in-game amusement park that contains mini-games for players to enjoy.
Yoshida further added that since it was given this opportunity the developer really tried its best to make the most of it. That’s evident in the screenshots, which contain obstacles and platforms that look very accurate to what you would see in Fall Guys. Even HUD elements from the battle royale seem to be included in FFXIV’s version.
As for when you’ll be able to play this, Yoshida promised the new mini-games would be included as part of the 6.5 updates sometime in September.
But if you really can’t wait for that and you need some Fall Guys X Final Fantasy content in your life sooner than later, I’ve got some good news for your weirdly specific desire. On August 23, a Final Fantasy-themed battle pass will launch in Fall Guys and will run for six weeks. The update will include costumes based on iconic Final Fantasy characters and creatures, like Chocobos.
Now, somebody just needs to add MC Skat Kat to one of these popular online video games. Please. Oh, and in other news, FFXIV is coming to Xbox Series X/S consoles later this year.
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Zack Zwiezen
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At long last, Xbox owners will soon get to enjoy the MMORPG PlayStation players have enjoyed for nearly a decade. Final Fantasy XIV is headed to Xbox Series X/S in spring 2024 after being a PlayStation console exclusive since 2014.
Producer and director Naoki Yoshida made the announcement on stage at the game’s 2023 fanfest in Las Vegas, NV alongside Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. The Xbox Series X/S version will offer 4K graphics and faster load times, like its PlayStation 5 counterpart. While the full release is still almost a year away, an open beta will be available for players to try much sooner when patch 6.5x arrives in the months ahead.
For those who have been living under an adamantoise shell, Final Fantasy XIV has you complete fetch quests, dungeons, and raids across the dazzling world of Hydaelyn, full of political intrigue and mythical wonder. The game was one of the first live-service disasters when it first launched in 2013, and was even entirely shutdown for a time before re-releasing as A Realm Reborn.
It’s recieved increasingly excellent expansions ever since, each introducing new characters, classes, and conflicts. And while it’s an MMO, a Duty Support system lets you play solo with AI-controlled NPCs. By the time Final Fantasy XIV comes to Xbox Series X/S, Square Enix says the feature will enable players to complete everything from the start of the game up through its most recent Endwalker expansion without ever needing to interact with another human being.
The story of how we got here, however, is a long one. Yoshida was asked as early as 2013 why the game wasn’t on Xbox One. His answer at the time was that Microsoft’s stance on crossplay was too restrictive. “The main reason from our side is that I don’t want the community to be divided; to be split into two or more. For example, one player might be on the PC version, another might be on the PS4 version, and I’m playing the Xbox version – but we’re not able to join the same game servers,” he told RPGSite at the time. “That is just… I just don’t like the idea. I disagree with it.”
That was back when Microsoft was the company seemingly standing in the way of crossplay between the two consoles. Years later, roles were reversed, with Sony pushing back against crossplay for games like Fortnite. Yoshida repeated his requirement for crossplay in a 2017 interview with Kotaku, and things seemed to be progressing in that direction not long after.
Spencer publicly promised to bring the game to Xbox at the X019 fanfest event in London. “We have a great relationship with Yoshida-san and we’re working through what it means to bring a cross-platform MMO, that they’ve run for years,” he told VGC at the time. “It will be one of the games that’s coming and it’s something that I know our Xbox fans will be incredibly excited to see.”
No deal immeidately materialized, however. Yoshida was asked again what the problem was during a 2021 interview around the time Final Fantasy XIV came to PS5. “So I feel bad for saying the same thing every time,” he told Easy Allies. “But we are still in discussions with Microsoft and I feel like our conversations are going in a positive tone.”
The positive tone of those conversations seemingly wasn’t enough to finally get Sony to agree to crossplay though, until now. The two companies also recently reached a 10-year agreement for Call of Duty to keep coming to PlayStation after Microsoft’s acqusition of Activision Blizzard is finalized. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure. Sony, Microsoft, and Square Enix did not immediately respond to requets for comment.
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Ethan Gach
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A Death Stranding player just discovered that if you don’t put up enough of a fight in its climactic boss battle, antagonist Higgs will pull a Mike Tyson and bite your character’s ear off. It’s not just an attack animation, either. Once bitten, a good chunk of Sam’s ear is gone for good.
On Sunday, Twitter user naven0m uploaded a Death Stranding clip of themself uncovering the hidden gameplay detail in its final climatic boss fight. In the clip, protagonist Sam Porter Bridges (Norman Reedus) is facing villain Higgs Monaghan (Troy Baker) in a knock-down, drag-out battle of fisticuffs. The sequence even has Tekken-like health bars that appear above the characters, making the walking simulator’s climactic face-off feel like something out of a genuine fighting game. It’s kinda wild, but then, it is a Kojima game, after all.
However, if you refuse to jab Higgs in his very punchable face while blocking his attacks, he’ll eventually guard-break Bridges and chomp the tip of his right ear clean off. The presentation and horrifying energy of it all is weirdly reminiscent of what clickers often do to Joel, also played by Troy Baker, when you get killed in The Last Of Us.
In a follow-up post, naven0m posted screenshots of Bridges’ ear post-boss fight, revealing that a sizable chunk of it remains missing. You can check out the gnarly clip below.
Read More: Death Stranding: The Kotaku Review
According to GamesRadar, the event will only be triggered by players blocking every one of Higgs’ blows and never countering him when prompted. Most players would never stumble upon this, since the game clearly expects you to fight back, and since Higgs is such a dastardly scamp who can’t keep getting away with more demonic acts of terrorism.
Read More: Death Stranding 2 Stars An Older Sam Bridges And… Octopus Babies?
Last December, director Hideo Kojima revealed his next project was a direct sequel to Death Stranding titled Death Stranding 2, and he showcased a typically bizarre trailer featuring a noticeably older Bridges, with Léa Seydoux also reprising her role as Fragile. While the game doesn’t have a release date, it’ll be neat to discover if there’s a unique Bridges character model reflecting the possible outcome that players got Sam’s ear noshed off by Higgs.
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Isaiah Colbert
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While not (yet) officially announced, new leaks indicate that McDonald’s is once again teaming up with The Pokémon Company to offer fans a fresh collection of 15 Pokémon cards to snatch up and flip on eBay for hundreds of dollars, or enjoy quietly at home. But probably eBay.
Since 2001, The Pokémon Company has, nearly every year, created promotional Pokémon cards that people can buy at local participating McDonald’s locations. These cards, which were only available in Japan until the 2011 promotion, have often featured unique symbols and are highly desired by collectors. In 2021, the McDonald’s X Pokémon promotional cards sold out quickly as collectors snatched up boxes at a time from the restaurants and sold them for hundreds apiece on eBay. And it seems possible that these newly leaked 2023 Pokémon McDonald’s cards might also sell out fast, too.
As PokéBeach reported on July 26, a reader sent the site images of the 15 cards from the upcoming (not officially announced) promotion, which apparently came out prematurely in Germany. PokéBeach claims these are all the cards that will be available during the yearly Pokémon event at McDonald’s. That makes sense, as in the past the number of promo cards was often around 12 to 15.
Here’s the full list via PokéBeach:
All of the Pokémon featured, with the exception of Pikachu, come from Scarlet & Violet. It seems just six of the 15 cards will be holo, those being Sprigatito, Fuecoco, Quaxly, Cetitan, Pikachu, and Klawf.
As before, these cards will be available in four-card booster packs that will come with Happy Meals. The cards will also come with a “Match & Battle” toy that looks to be based on a similar toy that was part of last year’s McDonald’s X Pokémon promotional event.
As for when to expect these cards to show up in the United States, PokéBeach says that the cards will be available in Germany and Austria on July 27 and in the UK on August 23.
No date has leaked for the U.S., though based on past events and this year’s known dates, it’s believed that the cards will also come to the United States sometime in August.
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Zack Zwiezen
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Yep, Super Turbo takes the Street Fighter crown, at least in our book. Truth be told, this is highly subject to personal opinion, and I think any of the top six or seven games in our rankings could easily be number one for someone else. Perhaps for you…and that’s cool. Since Super Street Fighter II Turbo is our top pick, I’ll try to convey why it rules.
For starters, it ended up being the ultimate evolution of Street Fighter II, the single most important fighting game the genre’s known. Capcom made two more attempts to follow up Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but as you’ve perhaps read by now, they had their own issues. This is the entry that stuck, and the one everyone still enjoys today.
Super Turbo was the logical culmination of the journey Capcom started in 1991, incorporating everything its designers learned from The World Warrior, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, and even the underwhelming Super into one final, excellent game. It also brought its own innovations, like meter-fueled super combos, throw softening (“teching”), and even rudimentary air juggling.
Characters, too, gained crucial moves that completed their movesets. Imagine Fei Long without his chicken wing, Ryu without his advancing fierce and overhead, Chun without upkicks, Gief without green glove, Honda without oicho. (You don’t have to, because Super exists.) The character balance wasn’t perfect, but was good enough to create consistently fun match-ups, and it was exciting when someone went on a streak with a low-tier like Cammy or T. Hawk.
(And let’s not forget series mainstay Akuma debuted here, becoming the first tournament-banned character in FGC history.)
All of the above, combined with the return of Hyper Fighting’s blessedly fast action, worked together to create short, intense matches largely devoid of gimmicks, instead focused on the 2D fighting basics of neutral, footsies, and zoning. Super Turbo was both fun as hell, and an excellent teacher of fighting game fundamentals.
When I play Super Turbo with a similarly skilled opponent today it’s like we’re engaged in an alternate form of communication, a hidden language composed of attacks and retreats, reads and feints. Sometimes words aren’t needed, because our hands are saying everything through the screen. I’m always chasing that mental “zone” feeling in video games, and at its best, Super Street Fighter II Turbo gets me there like few others.
While I’ve played and enjoyed most of the Street Fighter games, Super Street Fighter II Turbo is the one I’ll always go back to. I hold it in the same esteem as Doom, Super Mario Bros. 3, R-Type, Dark Souls…masterpieces that always remain relevant, and always have more to offer. — Alexandra Hall
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Alexandra Hall and Kenneth Shepard
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You know, I’ve gotta admire the bravery of Nintendo’s social teams to post even one single tweet about Yona, Sidon’s surprise fiance in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. However, I also doubt they were that shocked to see fans, slighted by her taking Link’s boyfriend away from him, rolled in with the good jokes.
The post itself is innocuous enough. We’re two months removed from Tears of the Kingdom’s launch, so we can post about characters who are “spoilers” without anyone getting justifiably mad. The tweet talks about her concern with the sludge problem in Zora’s Domain during the game’s main quest. It also, of course, mentions that she’s planning a wedding with Sidon, the sexy shark man that fans have been shipping romantically with Link with since Breath of the Wild in 2017.
If you weren’t incredibly online and into the Zelda fandom, you wouldn’t think anything of this. If you’re that person, you would also be pretty confused scrolling down to the comments and seeing the good jokes people are making about the situation. But you could probably suss out that Nintendo just hard launched Sidon’s new bae, and the jealous Link and Sidon shippers are in the comments demanding blood. But even so, it feels like everyone is in on the joke, and knew that this was inevitably the reaction Yona gets from the community. Typically, hopefully, all in good fun.
Honestly, as much as it pains me to admit it, my Sidon/Link ship is mostly a gag at this point because after the ending of Tears of the Kingdom, I’m so, so, so on the Link and Zelda are together now train it’s not even funny. Perhaps one day, the rest of my Sidon/Link ship brethren will can find similar peace, and know that even if Sidon marries Yona, she will not outlive the statue of Link riding Sidon that sits in Zora’s Domain.
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Kenneth Shepard
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I’ve finished Final Fantasy XVI and am now working on 100 percenting it, including beating the game a second time on the New Game+ “Final Fantasy” mode difficulty. For all the game’s flaws, of which there are plenty, there’s just so much it does that I just can’t get enough of. From the music and environments to the heart-stopping Eikon battles, Square Enix’s latest action-RPG is chock full of things both big and small, in your face and very subtle, that make it, for me at least, one of the most memorable Final Fantasy games in nearly two decades.
Released on June 22 as a timed PlayStation 5 exclusive, Final Fantasy XVI tells the story of the orphaned prince Clive and his (not so merry) band of outcasts as they seek to overthrow the powers that be and install a new, more equitable world order. It trades the turn-based, menu-heavy RPG customization the franchise is known for for chunky action combat and cinematic spectacle that’s constantly cranked to 11. And it works. Mostly. Here are some of our favorite things we can’t stop thinking about from Square Enix’s latest blockbuster adventure.
If we’re talking about little things in Final Fantasy XVI worth spotlighting, I think it would be a crime to not include Clive Rosfield’s slutty little waist. Who gave that man permission to wear a blood-red corset and just show off what he’s working with at all times? Oh, you’re sad about your brother’s death? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of your loud-as-fuck fit. Criminal. Lock him away. — Kenneth Shepard
Spectacle is at the heart of Final Fantasy XVI, and that includes using its Kaiju Eikon fights to recreate some classic anime moments. An early sequence where Ifrit punches the crap out of Phoenix is an homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Eikons can regrow entire limbs like in Attack on Titan. The development team took almost every opportunity afforded by the game’s central premise and used it to go berserk (speaking of which).
Final Fantasy XVI’s soundtrack was composed by Masayoshi Soken. It’s very subtle in parts compared to some earlier scores in the series, but goes very hard in others. Most satisfying of all is how elegantly it shifts mid-battle to take advantage of choreographed quick-time cinematic moments. “To Sail Forbidden Seas” is the name of the song that plays during all of the Eikon battles, and the mood ebbs and flows in perfect sync with the battle, as you go from hacking away at the stagger gauge to unleashing a flurry of cooldown abilities while the boss is vulnerable. The track builds, brings in the chorus, and then reaches another level when the cinematic clashes begin before settling back down again when it’s back to the main combat. Final Fantasy boss fights have always sought to be dynamic and exciting even when turn-based, but XVI takes it to a whole new level. Especially during the Titan fight.
At a certain point in the game, you start amassing keepsakes from your adventures, little remembrances of people you’ve helped or things you’ve accomplished. I like this because you don’t get anything for them except the keepsakes themselves. They don’t provide you with any combat bonuses or stat boosts. They’re just keepsakes, a little reminder that what matters most of all in the world of Final Fantasy 16 isn’t your strength stat or how good your bracers are, but the connections Clive forms with others.—Carolyn Petit
Speaking of epic boss fight moments, holy hell Torgal is out of his mind. I pointed at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio when he grabbed Benedikta in his jaws and swung her across the battle arena after she beat the crap out of Clive. We’ve moved so far beyond “Can you pet the dog?” If your game’s canine friend can’t go Super Saiyan on a demigod, then what’s even the point? Final Fantasy VIII’s Sant’ Angelo di Roma walked so Torgal could run.
A lot of massive crystals get destroyed in Final Fantasy XVI, and every time it’s as satisfying as watching an ice sculpture get sent through a wood chipper. Probably not great for Valesthea’s air quality, but beautifully effervescent nonetheless.
Sometimes a game’s graphics are so good you don’t even notice all the ways in which they’re incredible. Final Fantasy XVI’s intricate costumes and long hairstyles are particularly notable for how rarely, if ever, they clip through one another, let alone the environments. Clive in particular has a long dark mane and a long dark cape, and they never get caught on one another or stray objects across all of the environments, even when the rebel sellsword is vaulting over fences or climbing up ledges.
In keeping with Final Fantasy XVI’s theme of providing the occasional ridiculous level of attention to small details, I can’t get over the automatic animation Clive goes into every time you’re about to steer him into another NPC. Getting snagged on random characters in the world has been a staple in older games in the series, but here you’d have to go out of your way to steer into one. And even still, Square Enix’s developers decided to add a bespoke animation precisely for those rare occasions, just to keep things flowing naturally and avoid the the game-y-ness of the game coming through.
Whether it’s the rounding up of the numbers like a slot machine or the clink, clink, clink of new gil and items getting added to your inventory, there’s something magical about Final Fantasy XVI’s minimalistic battle results menu. At first I hardly noticed it, but with every battle the tiny dopamine hit of seeing and hearing Clive rack up points wrapped its tendrils around my lizard gamer brain.
Final Fantasy games are known for being beautiful, but I can’t get over the muted extravagance of some of Final Fantasy XVI’s environments. The hyper-realistic style almost masks how much is actually going on, whether its giant kingdoms in the background or dense forests thick with different types of foliage. Except for the deserts, which look like how my brain remembers every other Final Fantasy desert.
Shiva, Ifrit, Odin and Bahamut have been blowing up stuff since 1990’s Final Fantasy III, with summon animations that got more and more over-the-top in each new entry. Final Fantasy XVI is the first to render those scenes as if they were just part of the underlying fabric of the game rather than rewards doled out sparingly. My favorite is when, in one scene early on, Bahamut and Odin stare each other down from across a battlefield as their two kingdoms’ armies collide. It’s presented so nonchalantly that it’s easy to forget just how incredible it is to play a Final Fantasy that never flinches from showing you everything.
Clive is great and Cid is excellent. I love Gav too. There’s no shortage of great (mostly male) characters in Final Fantasy XVI, but let’s give it up for Uncle Byron, who thinks Clive is an imposter until they recite a scene from a play they used to perform together years ago at family parties. He’s a coward but throws his vast reserves of gil into the rebellion, wants to make amends for past failures, and never misses a chance to talk a big poetic game like he just sprang out of a Sir Walter Scott novel. The developers at Square even made sure to keep him animated behind the bar guzzling down beer at the inn during an early brawl in the Dhalmekian Republic.
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Ethan Gach
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Bugs in Tears of the Kingdom are being zapped faster by Nintendo than a Rentokil employee on his first day, so you might want to take advantage of this freshly discovered oddity before the next update. A collection of players (all credited in the video above) have worked together to discover a peculiar railing found in one section of the Depths, that has mysterious and unique properties. Properties that allow it to be one of the most useful items in building flying machines.
Extraordinarily, it’s gathered by visiting the Great Abandoned Central Mine in the Depths, and attaching stabilizers to the sides of those elevator platforms that are found in each corner. Doing this breaks off a section of the railing, that you can then fuse something to in order to add it to your Autobuild.
Once done, you can reproduce it anywhere, and for reasons unknown, it’s the only Autobuild item that isn’t destroyed by separation. It’s also got all the wrong physics properties applied, meaning it moves around on the gentlest of breezes, but has the robustness of a metal sheet. Which means: build flying stuff!
In the video above, Link&Zelda Talks shows how it can be used for improved hoverbikes, incredibly floaty biplanes, and even has its own glitches that allow you to fly very high in the air. People are going to do a ton with this, and hopefully it’s a peculiarity Nintendo will let slide.
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John Walker
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During a press junket interview for the upcoming animated film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, actor and co-writer Seth Rogen revealed that he’s been enamored with the heroes in a half shell for so long that he’s got the battle scars to prove it. More precisely, Rogen cracked his dome open playing with nunchucks like Michelangelo, as many of us have.
TMNT: Mutant Mayhem follows younger versions of the turtle quartet as they try to gain popularity among their fellow New Yorkers by putting a stop to the villainous Superfly’s crime wave. The animated film includes a star-studded cast of Hollywood actors in supporting roles including Rogen as Bebop, Ice Cube as Superfly, John Cena as Rocksteady, and action-movie legend Jackie Chan as Master Splinter, to name a few.
Speaking with Empire Magazine, Rogen revealed that his fanboy-related TMNT injury came soon after his father gifted him his pair of nunchucks.
“Part of the reason I did karate was because of the Ninja Turtles,” Rogen said. “Me and [co-writer Evan Goldberg] both did karate together. My dad got me nunchucks that I cracked my head open with, because I was obsessed with the Ninja Turtles, and Michelangelo specifically.”
Goldberg added to Rogen’s painful recountings of his ninja faux pas, divulging that it was more than Rogen’s head that the comedy actor broke when displaying his nunchuck skills, saying “Seth had just got these nunchucks. He was like, ‘Yo, check this out, I want to show you this awesome move,’ and just immediately shattered a huge chandelier from his parents’ house into a billion pieces. It took us, like, five hours to clean. On a sitcom, you’d be like, ‘This is too broad.’”
“It was instantaneous,” Rogen added. “It was as though what I was trying to show him was my ability to destroy a lamp.”
Read More: TMNT Movie Gets Shell-Shockingly Existential New Trailer
In retrospect, it’s probably best that Rogen fancied Mikey instead of Leonardo or Raphael. One could only imagine the kind of physical and property damage a kid could do if left unattended in a house with twin katana or two sais.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem hits theaters on August 2.
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Isaiah Colbert
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Coming off the heels of Bleach’s upcoming season of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War is the announcement that the popular supernatural sword-fighting anime is also receiving a new video game that looks pretty stunning and action-packed.
Bleach: Soul Resonance is a 3D-action role-playing game that appears to play similarly to games in the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series or the upcoming Jujutsu Kaisen game, Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash. According to the game’s website, players will experience a “low-latency combat experience with weapons and swords” and engage in strategic battles “with familiar faces on a battlefield full of blades.” The last Bleach video game to release in the U.S. (outside of Bandai Namco’s delisted Shonen Jump crossover game Jump Force) was Bleach: Soul Resurrección in 2011 for the PlayStation 3. Bleach: Soul Resonance is being published by Nuverse (Marvel Snap) and is currently still under development. You can check out the announcement trailer for Bleach: Soul Resonance below.
Unlike its fellow “big three anime” series, Naruto, Bleach hasn’t had a notable run of licensed video games that resonate with fans quite like the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series. However, the early cutscene and gameplay footage shown off in Bleach: Soul Resonance’s announcement trailer, looks to change that.
Outside of having pretty clean-looking 3D models of the anime’s titular characters, Bleach: Soul Resonance appears to be following the show’s Soul Society and Hueco Mundo arcs—its first two major storylines. In it, protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki wages war against the entire Soul Society and Arrancars to rescue his kidnapped friends Rukia and Orihime.
Right off the bat, Bleach: Soul Resonance nails emulating the anime’s big-fight feel in its early gameplay footage by recreating iconic moments from Ichigo’s hard-fought bouts against the blood-hungry Kenpachi Zaraki and the stoic Byakuya Kuchiki. Both gameplay snippets look pretty promising despite being from an early build of the game. The trailer even plays Ichigo’s catchy theme song “Number One” by Shiro Sagisu and Hazel Fernandez which is always a nice touch to get fans excited to see some action. Time will tell whether Bleach: Soul Resonance will finally give the beloved anime series the Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm treatment or if it’ll be just another underbaked licensed video game.
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Isaiah Colbert
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In April 2021, at the height of Web 3 Mania, Sega was one of the biggest companies to pledge its future to the scam that was “play to earn”. Now, just two years later and after the ass has completely fallen out of that market, Sega has had a change of heart.
As we wrote at the time, in a story with the headline ‘Sega Wants To Sell NFTs, Can Fuck Right Off’:
Sega Japan announced earlier today that it will be getting into the NFT business, partnering with (and buying a stake in) a company called Double Jump Tokyo, with plans to not only sell character-related tokens, but NFTs in future games as well.
The announcement is thin on details, but as Pocket Gamer reports, Sega hopes this “will be the start of a sequential expansion into a variety of content, including IPs currently in development and new IPs to be released in the future.”
Those plans are now mostly done for. In an interview with Bloomberg, Sega’s co-Chief Operating Officer Shuji Utsumi has said the company will now “withhold its biggest franchises from third-party blockchain gaming projects to avoid devaluing its content”, and will also be “shelving plans to develop its own games in that genre at least for now”.
“We’re looking into whether this technology is really going to take off in this industry, after all”, Utsumi told the site, adding that while its “biggest franchises” are off the table, “lesser known” properties like Three Kingdoms and Virtua Fighter will still be seeing some NFT tie-ins, albeit from third-party providers.
His best quote, however, is where he bluntly says “The action in play-to-earn games is boring. What’s the point if games are no fun?” My guy, we were telling you that in 2021, glad you finally came around.
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Luke Plunkett
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The most recent The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom patch seems to have done away with a few popular glitches, a Reddit post suggests. Nintendo issued update 1.2.0 on July 5 in order to “improve the gameplay experience,” it wrote in its patch notes, and to burn through your infinite money reserves, apparently.
“The autobuild frozen meat glitch was patched,” a Reddit user said. “Good thing I turned off automatic updates on my Switch a few days ago.”
As Kotaku senior editor Luke Plunkett previously reported, the “frozen meat glitch” allowed you to “trick the game into giving you loads of valuable resources by turning big hunks of meat into a weapon, then taking that weapon with you to the snow.” That’s the short of it.
Read More: Nintendo Goes On Tears of the Kingdom Rampage, Nukes Overpowered Glitches
The elaborate process involved attaching meat onto sticks and using “autobuild to ctrl+c, ctrl+v until you’ve built 21 meat clubs (the most the game can remember and place at any one time) and fused them all together,” Plunkett writes. Then, once you’ve retreated to and rested in a snowy area with your meat, it would freeze. You’d wake up to a beautiful bundle of frozen meat, or a 39,960 rupee value.
Not anymore, though. Say goodbye to your grill plans.
Update 1.2.0 also seems to remove the Tobio’s Hollow glitch, which let players duplicate their items in the late-game area Tobio’s Hollow Chasm.
Officially, 1.2.0 makes one general update and a few bug clean-ups. According to Nintendo’s patch notes, players who downloaded the update can expect these changes:
The Switch News channel update seems intriguing, though it will unlikely be a true replacement for 21 pieces of free meat. But while Nintendo is aggressive in bandaging every possible glitch, bug, and exploit, glitch hunters are determined. And Zelda has more secrets to offer, I’m sure.
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Ashley Bardhan
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During an Anime Expo press junket for Netflix’s upcoming anime, Pokémon Concierge, actress Rena Nōnen, also known as Non, revealed what it was like working on the stop-motion anime series and how its warm animation style will make any fan wish Pokémon resorts were real.
Pokémon Concierge follows a hardworking girl named Haru who works as a concierge at a resort where she shows hospitality to and fulfills the needs of weary Pokémon and their trainers. Pokémon Concierge also serves as the first collaboration between The Pokémon Company and the stop-motion studio Dwarf Animation.
“I’m sure we’ve all [felt like] we are bombarded, under pressure, or that we don’t want to get up and keep doing what we’ve been doing and just give up. But when you see Pokémon Concierge, it’s really therapeutic and it makes you want to try and be the best you can be,” Non said. “I wish viewers will see Pokémon Concierge [and feel like] they can keep going.”
One significant experience Non went through while recording voice lines for Haru was being filmed while she was pantomiming the struggles and frustration Haru endures in the series so that her facial expressions and mannerisms could be utilized to animate Haru and give weight to her puppet’s performance.
“Once I saw the finished scenes, they were very different from what you’d see in 2D, 3D, or CG animation. I was able to feel like ‘Oh, [stop motion] is also how you can enjoy Pokémon,” Non said. “When I saw [Haru] in action, I felt that it was totally believable and convincing.”
Shedding some light on her character, Non said that Haru, who often overworks herself and places a lot of pressure on herself to meet others’ expectations, learns that it’s okay to make mistakes and to not be so hard on herself over the course of the series. She’s aided in that journey of personal growth by her companionship with Psyduck, the Pokémon she meets at her new job working at the resort.
“When I was playing Pokémon games, Mewtwo was my favorite character. But when I started working on Pokémon Concierge, Psyduck in stop-motion animation… he’s just so adorable,” Non said. “Because he’s so cute he’s currently my favorite [Pokémon].”
Although Psyduck serves as Haru’s companion in the anime, Non assured fans that they’ll get to see other Pokémon as well throughout the series.
Pokémon Concierge is slated to premiere on Netflix this December.
Kotaku is covering everything at Anime Expo 2023, including big announcements at panels and exclusive one-on-one interviews with the industry’s biggest creators. Whether you’re a seasoned anime fan or a newbie, you can keep up with all things Anime Expo 2023 here.
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Isaiah Colbert
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I would rather not liken Master Detective Archives: Rain Code to the games its creative team is best known for, but I can’t help it when Spike Chunsoft and Too Kyo Games’ latest murder mystery sure does invite the comparison. Like Danganronpa before it, Rain Code is a murder mystery from the mind of Kazutaka Kodaka, adorned in the distinct art style of Rui Komatsuzaki, all to the backdrop of Masafumi Takada’s techno jazz score. Nearly every mechanic has a near 1:1 equivalent to Danganronpa, to the point where I play through and wonder if everyone involved would rather be making another one of those titles but can’t because of Danganronpa V3’s damning meta-commentary about running a series into the ground until it’s beyond recognition.
Whatever the motivation, Rain Code still has a lot of Danganronpa’s pink blood running through its veins, and while it takes some time to start living up to its predecessor, it had me wrapped around its finger by its final cases and hopeful that Kodaka may have found a new outlet to indulge his fascination with mysteries without returning to a story that’s long finished.
Rain Code follows a detective-in-training Yuma Kokohead in a world where detectives are superpowered figures respected around the world. He’s an amnesiac who’s made a deal with a death god named Shinigami who takes the form of a purple puffball ghost with a love of carnage and death, all while basking in it with lighthearted whimsy. Much like Kodaka’s previous work, the game uses the two characters’ contrasting views of the world to constantly oscillate between dire stakes and absurdist humor but uses its supernatural framing to crank the team’s usual antics up to an inevitable over-the-top conclusion. Much of Rain Code feels like Kodaka’s writing style at his most unhinged, no longer bound by the limitations of a (relatively) grounded setting and free to use magic, superpowers, and god-like entities to justify some wild imagery, for better or worse.
For the first few chapters, I was put off by Rain Code’s supernatural elements and how they framed the mystery-solving. As Yuma and Shinigami stumble into solving crimes around the city of Kanai Ward, Shinigami opens up a pocket dimension to a Mystery Labyrinth. These are pretty comparable to a Palace in Persona 5 in that they are physical manifestations of the mystery itself. Every question there is about a case is given a literal form, whether that be doors to walk through to answer a multiple-choice question or an enemy that Yuma must fight with a truth-bearing blade to literally cut through their arguments as they appear in text on the screen.
Danganronpa represented these same concepts through mini-games that were more symbolic, such as imagining yourself snowboarding down a slope and choosing paths representing answers as you made deductions. Rain Code uses the Mystery Labyrinth to give everything a diegetic place in its world. I admire the commitment to the bit, but the framing initially felt like it was the game bending over backward to bring Danganronpa mechanics into a legally distinct format in a way that justified every moment of deduction and reasoning in a tangible way, rather than a conceptual one.
It wasn’t until later chapters where Rain Code started to really reckon with the reality of using the Mystery Labyrinth that I started to buy in. Shinigami is a ghost when she and Yuma are in the real world, but once they enter the Labyrinth, she sheds her mascot character design for her true form: which is a tall, gothic woman who reaps upon the souls of the culprit at the end of each case. Once Yuma is confronted with the truth, he is also confronted with the cost of finding it. Unlike Danganronpa, this method and outcome aren’t forced on Yuma, he just continually falls on it as he’s put on his back foot. At its core, Rain Code is about the pursuit of the truth and its consequences, but while Shinigami leaves bodies in her wake, the game posits that the truth isn’t meant to be morally right or wrong. In exposing it, people can build from the truth rather than tear themselves down further.
This is why Rain Code constantly invites comparisons to Kodaka’s most prolific work. If it weren’t for all the clear mechanical and artistic parallels, that baseline belief in people is the symmetry that connects this team’s past and present work. Rain Code’s latter chapters invoke the same outburst of emotions that this team is best known for, even if it takes its time getting there. In many ways, its narrative and mysteries get messy, sometimes diluted by the supernatural framing rather than enhanced by it. But despite my initial misgivings, I was surprised at how well it came together. Given this team’s history, I probably should’ve trusted Rain Code to get me by the end.
All the framing aside, Rain Code does feel rough around the edges from a technical standpoint. Rather than using the 2D sprite-based visual novel style of Danganronpa, pretty much everything in Rain Code is rendered in 3D, and this game chugs something fierce on Switch. Whether it’s during the exploration segments through Kanai Ward or the action-oriented setpieces within the Mystery Labyrinth, the game often feels like it’s struggling to hold itself together. While third-person, 3D setup gives Rain Code its own flavor and allows the game some pretty spectacular visual moments (the neon-soaked cyberpunk aesthetic of Kanai Ward looks great when it’s not in motion), there were stretches of time where it felt like the game needed another pass for technical polish.
At a certain point, I think I became desensitized to the framerate drops and bought into the concept and was happy to dive into Mystery Labyrinth. Comparatively, Rain Code’s cases aren’t quite as elaborate as its predecessor’s, but they each had satisfying mysteries and an explosive human element at their core. Even when I would feel skeptical about a reveal, Rain Code would quickly point to a clue I’d long forgotten that tied things together. Some solutions might have felt farfetched, but within the world it established, these cases felt airtight and satisfying to solve, even when the conclusion was devastating to watch unfold.
Rain Code is built by a team that knows how to make these kinds of games, and as a long-time fan of the themes Kodaka tends to write around, I was pretty moved by the end even though it nearly lost me in the beginning. If you’ve never been a fan of Kodaka’s mix of camp, heavyhanded themes, and theatrics, Rain Code will likely not grab you. But despite it feeling like Danganronpa’s distant cousin, it makes it clear this team doesn’t have to lean on Monokuma’s death game as a crutch and can build something new upon its bones instead. Hopefully, this means Kodaka can continue to let old things die on their own terms and make new things instead.
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Kenneth Shepard
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Elden Ring may be a tough open-world RPG that requires precise timing and ongoing dedication, but the enemies don’t scale in difficulty with you. So if your progress ever hits a wall, it’s technically possible to take the easy way out and simply grind your character into having better stats than whatever challenge is at hand. And one enemy above all others is excruciatingly perfect for the task of being XP fodder.
I speak, of course, of the Albinauric, those alien-like creatures that live a pitiful existence in the Lands Between. Seriously, their lore is pretty sad. Created by humans, Albinaurics were treated as disposable by their makers due to their synthetic nature and feeble physical attributes. Half the time you encounter Albinaurics, the context is terrible: You’ll see them imprisoned and tortured, sick with a dangerous illness, moaning, or going mad. Every so often, though, you’ll come across a group of Albinaurics who can gang up on you if you’re not careful.
If you visit Mohgwyn Palace, however, you’ll come across a large cliff that’s littered with Albinaurics. My read is that they’re there to be sacrificed for their blood, allowing Mohgwyn to remain powerful. What’s curious about this set of Albs, though, isn’t their potential implications for the story. Rather, you come to find out very quickly that these gray cavemen are horrifyingly useful.
I don’t have the exact number in front of me, because it’s impacted by things like your gear and what you consume, but it’s possible to roll through this area, kill them all, and rack up millions of runes with enough patience. Part of what makes it so easy is that they’re extremely slow to react, and you can reload right near the start of the cliff once you do a rotation.
I am not free of sin. I’ve spent hours on this cliff, killing Albinaurics over and over again, all while vaguely wondering if this act of barbarism made me any better than, say, noted asshole Godrick the Grafted.
And apparently I’m not alone in this. According to new stats released by FromSoftware, the most-murdered enemy in the entire game is the club-wielding Albinauric, clocking in at 9.4 billion deaths. As if that weren’t enough, the fourth most-murked enemy is the species’ curved sword variant, who’s suffered some 3.4 billion deaths. Damn. I’m feeling guilty all over again.
The stats come as a part of a larger infographic, which include cool tidbits like that players have asked Renala for a rebirth 38.6 million times. Notably, despite the billions of murders, players have apparently only asked for atonement 526,843 times as of this writing.
May Marika be gentle on our silver-stained souls.
You can see the full infographic here. Oh, and if you’re looking to be a better person after all is said and done: You really shouldn’t be wearing a Golden Scarab talisman or popping a gold pickled fowl foot when you’re in Mohgwyn Palace for that extra rune boost.
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Patricia Hernandez
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Final Fantasy XVI, a more action-focused take on the RPG franchise, clearly pulls inspiration from a lot of other popular media. As Game Informer reported back in May, Square Enix was inspired by blockbuster films and hit series like Game of Thrones, Godzilla, and Neon Genesis Evangelion during the game’s development. And it’s that last source of inspo that is garnering attention after players noticed a detailed homage to the mecha anime series.
ResetEra forum user Lady Bow posted a video comparing a battle between anime protagonist Shinji Ikari and Sachiel in Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Tokyo-3 (a post-apocalyptic version of Tokyo) to a cataclysmic battle between Phoenix and Ifrit within the early hours of FFXVI.
Read More: All Of The Internet’s Urgent Final Fantasy XVI Questions, Answered
The Ifrit fight (which is playable in the demo, btw!), takes place between two summons, which manifest in FFXVI by basically turning the player into a giant kaiju version of a deity. Early in the game, one of the outposts in the game’s fictional kingdom of Rosaria is ambushed. Phoenix does its damndest to protect it from the rampaging Ifrit. Unfortunately, the Phoenix getting torn from ass to appetite in the scene is Joshua, the younger brother of FFXVI protag, Clive. You can check out a GIF of the video below.
And just like in NGE with Shinj and Eva Unit 01, this fight showcases a point-of-view-esque depiction of the gigantic kaiju mounting its adversary and dishing out wild strikes to their face before clubbing them with a double-arm hammer fist punch.
The similarities between the fights also makes Clive begging the hulking titan to cease his onslaught all the more tragic. Clive’s desperate plea somewhat mirrors Shinji begging his father, Gendo Ikari, to stop his mecha from crushing his friend’s entry plug after his unit went AWOL. They’re like poetry because they rhyme, you see.
And there you have it: not only is Final Fantasy XVI a video game with similar grit and political subterfuge as George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series and bombastic Devil May Cry-esque action, but it’s also the latest video game to pay homage to NGE creator Hideaki Anno’s body of work. We love to see it.
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Isaiah Colbert
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During Wednesday’s Nintendo Direct, Konami showed off a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol.1. The upcoming collection of past Metal Gear games includes some of the earliest and biggest games from the popular stealth series. However, 2008’s Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots isn’t included, and I’m worried Konami isn’t going to include it in a future, theoretical Vol. 2.
Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1 was first announced in May. The collection contains the first seven games of the series and will be released on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and 5, and (just announced earlier today) Nintendo Switch. These games aren’t being remastered and they aren’t remakes. Instead, this is a new collection of classic MGS games that will make it easier to play these older titles on newer platforms. The collection will also include screenplay books of each game and some other goodies, too.
However, not included in this collection is the PS3-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which is a shame as the game is currently only playable via emulation or on original PS3 hardware. At one point, MGS4 was available to stream via PS Now, but that is no longer the case. While most other MGS games have been ported to multiple platforms, MGS4 remains locked to the PS3. Why? What is the reason for never porting MGS4 to any other platform?
If you ask the internet about this, and you’ll not doubt see some of this in the comments, a popular theory that is often spouted off as if it’s a fact is that MGS4 is incapable of running on anything but a PS3. But that’s not true. You can, right now, download an emulator and play MGS4 at 60fps without much trouble.
And assistant producer of the game Ryan Payton suggests in Steven L. Kent’s book The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2 that, at one point, MGS4 was actually running on an Xbox 360 and looked and played fine. Reportedly, that version never happened due to Microsoft’s console using DVDs and not Blurays. Konami didn’t want to spend the extra money on shipping multiple discs for the Xbox 360 version. This is more than likely the main reason MGS4 remained a PS3 exclusive and was even alluded to by former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton in 2008. Konami also said this was the reason in 2014.
Now, in 2023, most consoles use Bluray discs and all of them support digital games—which can be as large or small as you want. So that problem is solved. Yet, I’m still not convinced Konami will actually bring MGS4 to modern machines or to PC. It’s certainly not easy to port a game to new hardware, especially one that exists natively on just one platform. Plus, this whole process wouldn’t be cheap, would involve a good deal of resources, and would likely require tweaks to how the game plays as it heavily relied on the Dualshock 3/Sixaxis controller.
Sadly, it seems Konami isn’t going to do the necessary work to help preserve this entry in the Metal Gear franchise. A previous report from Windows Central, which correctly revealed information about the Metal Gear Solid Collection and the MGS3 remake before release also stated that a potential Vol. 2 would not include MGS4, but instead would feature Peace Walker, Portable Ops, Metal Gear Rising: Revegance, and a few other spin-offs.
Sadly, it seems Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots—with all its long cutscenes, weird live-action bits, creepy monkey, and cool stealth camo—will remain a PS3 exclusive. Likely due to technical issues, but also, maybe Konami just forgot about it. There are a lot of games in the series. It’s easy to forget one or two of them. I get it. I forget Metal Gear Acid exists.
Still, I hope that one day, someone over at Konami remembers this game exists and that it deserves a second life on new hardware.
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Zack Zwiezen
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