As Square Enix continue to mine middled-aged people's nostalgic memories of long free days sat in front of a PlayStation, they've announced another much-anticipated remaster: Chrono Cross. Originally released in 1999, the JRPG is coming to PC (and some consoles) as Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition with new updated 3D character models, some new 2D art, a "refined" soundtrack, and other tweaky bits. It looks better than many of the garbage PC ports they were releasing a few years ago. Check out the trailer yourself below.

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Consumers can now obtain tickets for the Kingdom Hearts 20th anniversary event exhibit. However, they will need to participate in a lottery system on the Square Enix Members website in order to get a ticket. That said, there are some stipulations as to who can register through this system. These include being located within Japan and being at least 18 years of age. Applicants for the lottery will also need a Square Enix account. Applications will remain open until February 17, 2022. Winners will be notified if they have won a ticket sometime in early March 2022. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

A total of 150 applicants will be selected to receive tickets through the lottery system. Square Enix also shared some rules for attending the event. One rule prohibits participants from filming during the event. Anyone caught recording footage of the event will be asked to delete the footage and leave. Additionally, Square Enix stated that if you are chosen through the lottery system, your travel to Shibuya, or further accommodations, will not be paid for.

Last week, Worms developer and indie game publisher Team17 brought the ire of the internet upon itself as bosses attempted to launch a range of collectible Worms NFTs. But while the reveal, swift condemnation and embarrassing backtrack have all now passed, employees at the developer's main Wakefield and Nottingham sites remain stunned. They say the incident reflects a company out of touch with its staff - and which is yet to say sorry to team members left in the internet's firing line.

Speaking to Eurogamer under condition of anonymity to protect their careers, more than a dozen employees have said they felt let down by how Team17 handled the announcement, and that the company's refusal to listen to staff concerns has added additional pressure to a workforce already worn thin. Team members I spoke to - fiercely loyal to their colleagues and proud of the work they do - were aghast at the public drubbing the company's name got last week, and say they have become increasingly upset by the decisions of management over the past few years, as workloads have risen while pay has remained poor.

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The Sims 4 wedding themed Game Pack won't be releases in Russia due to its gay propaganda laws.

The Russian government passed a law in 2013 that supposedly protects children from homosexual content, stating it contradicts traditional family values.

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Microsoft's megabid to acquire Activision Blizzard has raised questions about the future of the publisher's cross-platform titles.

Facing regulatory scrutiny, Microsoft explicitly committed to Call of Duty releasing on PlayStation beyond existing agreements.

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A new trailer for Atomic Heart has been unveiled, and it is just as surreal as you might expect.

This latest trailer keeps the tone of previous teasers for the game - think Bioshock meets the USSR. With a robot uprising, an experimental polymer glove and an array of psychedelic scenes, it is hard to look away.

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Cult PS1 classic JRPG Chrono Cross is coming to Europe for the first time.

The spiritual successor to the SNES favourite Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross was never released outside of Japan and America.

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Dying Light 2 is quite the hardware fiend, hence why enabling DLSS – provided your GPU supports it – is so useful for keeping frame rates up. Sadly, in both the review build I tested and at launch, even the highest quality DLSS setting looked uncharacteristically lower-res. It was still worth using, especially if you fancied clambering over Villedor’s rooftops at 4K or with ray tracing effects, but there was a nagging sense that DLSS can do better. And now it can, for Dying Light 2’s 1.04 update is live, and sharpens Nvidia’s upscaling tech to close that gap between the rendering and native resolutions.

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A demo for 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is available for the Nintendo Switch via the Japanese eShop, and Atlus has released some streaming rules for it. Players cannot upload music from the game for commercial purposes, or upload any streamed footage to commercial websites. However, Atlus does allow players to stream the game to YouTube, Twitch, and other streaming platforms. That said, any progress made in the Nintendo Switch demo for 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim will carry over to the full release of the game. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

Alongside the streaming regulations, Atlus stated that if any video, or streamed footage, infringes upon the rules it has set in place, it will remove the content. It also stated that it will not compensate any third party for the removal of their footage. The demo takes roughly 3 hours to complete. In it, players can progress through the tutorial as well as through Stages 1-5.

In November 2021, Atlus announced 13: Sentinels Aegis Rim would release for Nintendo Switch during a special anniversary broadcast. The stream revealed that the Nintendo Switch version of the title will be identical to its PlayStation 4 release. However, the Nintendo Switch version will have new weapons added to it.

In the past few weeks, popular artist Cotoh Tsumi has been repeatedly hit with tracing allegations. On 2ch and Twitter, critics have posted examples of what they say proves these charges, which the artist has denied. The criticism has become incessant, and now, some collab goods are being pulled. The Pokémon Company,…

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A planned expansion for Assassin's Creed Valhalla is instead being spun off into its own separate standalone game, a new report claims. The unnamed and unannounced game supposedly stars chaotic frenemy Basim, and will be more a smaller stealth-focused game rather than another rambling open-world murder-o-rama. But are we talking stealth-stealth, or Assassin's Creed stealth, or modern Ubisoft stealth?

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Norzelia is a land divided. To the West, the Duchy of Aesfrost holds the essential supply of iron, to the East, Hyzante keeps a tight grip on salt supplies. Between them sits Glenbrook, a neutral domain, dependent on both of its neighbours in equal measure. Triangle Strategy begins after what's known as the Saltiron War - the fighting is over, but the newly-won peace is still frail.

You take the role of Serenoa Wolffort, who as a representative of Glenbrook is trying to learn more about the complex politics at play to determine the best course of action in order to ensure lasting peace.

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Sometimes I struggle with new games, with new worlds, and I wonder if it's just me. I struggle in the sense that I can feel myself resisting them and refusing to accept them. I can feel them pushing new things on me, new worlds full of people and history and problems, and I know how much they want me to care. But we've only just met; I don't care. Just because I pressed "play" doesn't mean I'm automatically invested in what's going on. And I wonder if some games lose sight of that. Maybe it's not me - maybe it's games that struggle with introductions.

That's why I was struck playing Firewatch this weekend (it's now on Game Pass) and by how strong an opening can be, and how seemingly effortlessly it can coax you into caring about the world you're in.

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The Pokemon Company has been busy releasing a series of humorous commercials to market its latest game Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The newest video is a continuation of the first one, and it features the hungry baby Pokemon Munchlax in a parody of a cooking show.

The commercial starts with a host talking to two contestants who have been deemed “the worst chefs in the world” and are on the show to become better cooks. One of the contestants presents his mac and cheese dish, but the host is disgusted and throws it aside saying that it smells like fungus.

That’s when we see a Munchlax, who was caught stealing food in the very first “It’s Pokemon, but not as you know it” commercial. This time, Munchlax eats all of the disgusting dishes that the contestants have prepared, gulping them down in one bite and surprising the host. The rest of the commercial shows some gameplay of Pokemon Legends: Arceus to show that the game is unlike anything fans of the series have experienced in the past.

This series of commercials has been a hilarious way to advertise Pokemon Legends: Arceus by parodying popular TV show tropes and inserting plush Pokemon found in the Hisui region into them. They are a quirky throwback to commercials of the past that did not take themselves too seriously, and we’re a big fan of this trend.

The Russian government is notoriously homophobic, to the point where a law was passed in 2013 that everyone outside of Russia simply refers to as the ‘Russian gay propaganda law.’ Which goes a long way to explaining why EA won’t be releasing the latest Sims expansion in the region.

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Today Sega released its financial results for the third quarter of the fiscal year, related to the period ended on December 31, 2022.

We hear that both net sales and operating profits increased significantly year on year, respectively up 12.6% and 141.5%.

The entertainment content business, which includes games, saw 6.1% growth in sales year-on-year and 11% growth in ordinary income.

The Entertainment Content Business is listed among the drivers of the positive performance and new games including Shin Megami Tensei V, Football Manager 2022, and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania are all said to have performed strongly.

As a result of the strong results, the company has increased its full-year forecast to 315 billion yen (from 305) in net sales and 30 billion yen (from 21.5) in ordinary income.

The Entertainment Content business’ forecast grew from 230 billion yen in sales to 232.5, and from 32.5 billion yen in ordinary income to 36.

Below you can check out all the relevant data.

Following the reveal of Version 2.5 of Genshin Impact, developer MiHoYo published a new trailer featuring the new character coming with the update, Yae Miko.

This time around we don’t get to see gameplay, but instead, the trailer focuses on introducing her in a rather interesting way.

She will be available in Genshin Impact’s gacha on February 16.

You can check the trailer out below, both in English and in Japanese, depending on your voice-over flavor of choice.

Today Atlus and Vanillaware released a new demo of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim on the Japanese Nintendo eShop.

The demo, which for now has been released only in Japanese, is pretty sizable, promising about three hours of gameplay and basically providing a comprehensive look at the beginning of the final game.

On top of that, saved data will be transferable to the full game when it releases.

At the moment, there is no confirmation that the demo will release in the west as well.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is currently available for PS4. It will launch on Nintendo Switch in North America and Europe on April 12 and in Japan on April 14, 2022. We recently learned that it shipped 500,000 units.

Today Compile Heart released a new trailer of the upcoming JRPG Hyperdimension Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters.

The trailer reveals that the four goddesses Neptune, Noire, Vert, and Blanc will also appear in the game alongside the little sisters.

We also get a look at gameplay and at the rest of the cast that will appear in the game.

You can check it out below, alongside the costumes that will be distributed with the digital deluxe edition.

If you have been hoping to see the likes of Fry, Bender, Leela, and more returning to the limelight, then you are in luck. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, streaming platform Hulu has ordered 20 new episodes for the return of Futurama after nearly a decade of the show going off-air.

Original voice cast members will be returning, with Billy West (Fry) and Katey Sagal (Leela) the standouts. Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr and David Herman will also return as ensemble players who helped bring the other characters to life. John DiMaggio, who voices Bender, is still in the process of finalizing a deal to return.

Legendary Nintendo Wii launch game Wii Sports is getting a proper follow-up on the Switch, though it's long past the Switch's launch window. The Nintendo Switch Sports release date is set for April 29, 2022.

The February 2022 Nintendo Direct shared a trailer for the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ16-1YIRAc

The Nintendo Switch Sports release date trailer detailed some of the updates coming to the Switch iteration of the series. Rather than the system-level Mii avatars, Nintendo Switch Sports players are represented by more detailed characters. Environments and maps also feature updated graphics from the Wii original. The game will support local play on a single Switch system for up to 4 players, as well as online play for the first time. Online options include friend-based matches and randomized matchmaking. Players can unlock additional items from online play.

All PC versions of the Dark Souls games will remain offline for the foreseeable future, according to a new tweet from series publisher Bandai Namco, in order to fix at least one major security vulnerability. Further, the developers are working to ensure that the same serious vulnerability does not persist in…

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Because it’s a Kirby game, and because Kirby games are never allowed to sit at the adult’s table of Nintendo’s release schedule, you would think the upcoming release of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, aka what you could assume to be just another Kirby platformer, would go unremarked by many. And yet...this game is…

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With the finale of The Book of Boba Fett now behind us, it would appear that there would be a gap left to fill for the Star Wars fans on Disney’s streaming service. However, just like any hero who arrives whenever he needs to be, Star Wars will be celebrating the 45th anniversary of A New Hope with the long-awaited Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ series, which is debuting on May 25.

Ewan McGregor will be back to reprise the role of the iconic Jedi Master, with the story picking up 10 years after the events of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. If you are not familiar, that is where he faced his greatest defeat, with Anakin Skywalker giving in to the corruption and turning to the dark side, giving birth to Sith Lord Darth Vader.

While the announcement is sure to cause a tizzy, we do not exactly know the full scope of the plot at this time, except the detail that Obi-Wan Kenobi will oversee a young Luke Skywalker on the planet of Tatooine.

The Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ series will also see the return of Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader, which should make for an interesting reunion. Joining the cast are Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Sung Kang, Simone Kessell, and Benny Safdie.

The show will be executive produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Michelle Rejwan, Deborah Chow, Ewan McGregor, and Joby Harold.

Here’s a closer look at the poster:

Cloud from Final Fantasy VII will appear in the racer roster in Chocobo GP. However, everyone won't have immediate access to him. Rather, he's someone folks will have to earn. Square Enix confirmed there will be a Season Pass system, and he will be among the rewards in the first one. In addition, Squall from FFVIII will appear.

Here's the official reveal. It doesn't actually show Cloud in a vehicle, but it does offer a glimpse at how the racer will appear in Chocobo GP. He comes armed with his Buster Sword. Square Enix didn't mention if a Season Pass will cost money.

"Not interested" in #ChocoboGP? Let's change that!

Cloud Strife from @FinalFantasyVII joins the race in season 1. Cloud will be a Season Pass exclusive award for you to unlock. pic.twitter.com/2NU2R1pQYr

— FINAL FANTASY (@FinalFantasy) February 10, 2022

A follow-up tweet confirmed he unlocks at level 60.

Today, during its latest Nintendo Direct broadcast, Bandai Namco announced a brand new Gundam game, SD Gundam Battle Alliance.

The game will come in 2022 for basically everything with a chip, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC (via Steam and Windows Store).

The announcement came with a trailer, which you can enjoy below.

Here’s how Bandai Namco describes the game, directly from the press release:

The Xenoblade Chronicles 3 characters might remind you of ones from a past game, as Xenoblade Chronicles 2 designer Masatsugu Saito returned to work on the cast. Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi brought it and other details up in an official message following the game's announcement.

The announcement didn’t just mention Saito. A number of other returning Xenoblade Chronicles series staff will also be back. For example, Koichi Mugitani contributed designs for Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and made key art for this entry. Returning composers ACE, Kenji Hiramatsu, Manami Kiyota, Mariam Abounnasr, and Yasunori Mitsuda will be back. All five composed music for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 too.

As a reminder, you can already see how some of the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 characters look. The first trailer appeared as part of its February 2022 Nintendo Direct reveal. The main protagonist and both allies and enemies all showed up in the initial footage.

To help provide more insight, here's another scene taken from the game.

The last of the announced Pixel Remasters arrives near the end of the month The last of the six previously...

The post Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster will launch on February 23 appeared first on Destructoid.

Plan your moves out in advance The release of Triangle Strategy is right around the corner, but you can test the waters...

The post Triangle Strategy gets a new demo today, and you can carry over progress appeared first on Destructoid.

As promised in rather more general terms back in December, Square Enix's latest Final Fantasy pixel remaster - which this time focuses on Final Fantasy 6 - will launch this month. However, the publisher has now supplemented that previous news with some welcome specifics, confirming its fancied-up Final Fantasy 6 will arrive on Steam and mobile devices on 23rd February.

"The War of the Magi caused magic to disappear from the world," explains Square Enix in its brisk summary of Final Fantasy 6's plot over on the pixel remaster's Steam page. "A thousand years later, humanity relies on machines - until they find a young woman with mysterious powers...All the playable characters have their own stories, goals, and destinies. Journey through their interwoven fates in this sweeping melodrama."

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The first two games in the series will be available, but not the third — sorry, Mother 3 fans!

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This two-game compilation is coming to Nintendo Switch first on July 8, 2022 During today’s Nintendo Direct, the one and...

The post Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is just in time for the 25th anniversary appeared first on Destructoid.

GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon is now available for the Nintendo Switch. As something of a surprise announcement, Nintendo revealed the title to be available for Switch through its Japanese Nintendo Direct. Its short montage shared that consumers can immediately purchase the title. It is available worldwide for Nintendo Switch, and can be purchased for $24.99 through the Nintendo eShop.

A deluxe edition is also available to purchase. It costs $34.99, and comes with the Famicom version of the game. However, the in-game text for Famicom version is entirely in Japanese, with the exception of the menu screen. The deluxe edition also comes with a gallery mode, digital artbook, and a mini-soundtrack. The soundtrack features a total of 15 songs.

Previously, Konami stated that the title would release on the Nintendo Switch. However, while it was slated for a 2022 release, it was not clear when the title would eventually arrive on the console.

GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon originally launched on PCs through Early Access in May 2021. In June 2021, the developers added a new playable character, Getsu Renge, into the game. Several quality-of-life updates joined the game alongside the addition of the new character.

GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon is out now on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Platform: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Publisher: Hello Games
Developer: Hello Games
Release: August 9, 2016 (PlayStation 4, PC), July 24, 2018 (Xbox One), November 10, 2020 (Xbox Series X/S), November 12, 2020 (PlayStation 5), 2022 (Switch)
Rating: Teen

Procedurally-generated space odyssesy No Man’s Sky becomes a pocket universe this summer when it heads to Switch, per today’s Nintendo Direct.

While the western Nintendo Direct broadcast had quite a few interesting games to share, as usual, the Japanese version had a few extras. Enter Loop8.

The game has been announced by Marvelous Entertainment and it’s a “juvenile JRPG” for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.

It’ll release in Japan in 2022.

The game is set eight months after a disaster that “shattered the hopes of humanity.” The hero named Nini has lost his family and home due to said disaster and moves with his relatives to a small and peaceful countryside town.

There he is welcomed by Konoha, a girl who says she’s his relative.

The mountains, the sea, the old houses, and the new friends, even the girls in the same class. Everything feels fresh and new to our hero. Then he meets a fox-eared girl who claims to have been sent by the gods to help, while a massive sphere appears in the sky.

In this town where everyday life and extraordinary happening mix, the hero’s long summer begins.

The titular “loop” is between two parts. In the first Nini will try to find people possessed by the mysterious “Kegai” who are a threat to humanity. During his everyday life, he will build relationships and train for the battles to come.

After finding someone possessed by the Kegai he will enter the metaphysical space between the present world and the next, where the relationships and training will help in the battle against the enemies.

When you want to redo something, you can go back to certain points while keeping some of your current self.