Nodon. I'm sorry? Nodon. Not Monad. Nodon. Funny word - a palindrome, which is always money in the bank. I picture a sort of spring, for some reason, a springy, chewy, bouncy thing, each side contracting inwards to that central D, that pivot. Nodon is a brilliant word. It sounds like the sort of thing you might have filling a useful drawer somewhere in the back of the shed. "Could you get me the portable hot-plate? It's next to the Nodons." It sounds like the ambassador from an alien race who has already promised to help with our whole carbon emissions thing. All considered, I hope whoever came up with Nodon got a day off in lieu.

Nodon is one of the stars of Nintendo's new game. Or rather Nodon are, because they are many. Nodon are legion. "There's a Nodon for that," you might say, reaching for some ludic variation of that drawer in the shed. Quite. There probably is a Nodon for that. The other star is you, because Nintendo's new game is not a game at all, really, but rather a tool for making games. There are plenty of these tools, right, and yes, Nintendo has made a few. It's made a few game-making tools that were pretty much games in themselves actually. And now it's made another. And this one comes with Nodons in it.

Game Builder Garage will be exclusive to the eShop when it launches on the 11th of June. It's a selection of tools for making games. Any kind of games! Test it! And it's built around seven lessons. Each lesson teaches you how to make a specific game in a specific genre. The lessons promise to be funny, and playful, and they will build on one another. After the first lesson is done, though, you'll unlock a mode that allows you to freely create, so you won't be constrained by the lessons or their genres for long.

Playing the recent Diablo II: Resurrected technical alpha was like a glimpse of a different time and place, filtered through a modern lens. The action-RPG classic still feels great to play, but it’s interesting to return to such a measured pace of combat, and to feel the weight of choices in inventory management and character progression once again. It’s very much the same game, but at the same time, the team is modernising it. The game’s impressive visual and aural makeover is perhaps the most obvious, but beyond that are some carefully evaluated quality of life changes to reduce friction while maintaining the core gameplay.

SNK's latest KOF XV trailer reveals both Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia will be back, and they'll team up with King in the new game.

The post KOF XV Ryo and Robert Trailer Reveals They’ll Team Up With King appeared first on Siliconera.

We’ve taken a glance at Super Mario 64's PC port before, as recently as February, but this very extensive look by Digital Foundry shows just how damn good the thing can look when given the right amount of love and attention.

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Of all the many (many) issues to plague Outriders since its early April launch, few have caused more pain than the insidious inventory-deletion bug. As of today, affected players should start to see lost gear return, developer People Can Fly announced via the game’s subreddit.

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A Scorbunny Build-a-Bear plush will race into both the online and retail stores this week.

The post Scorbunny Build-a-Bear Plush Revealed appeared first on Siliconera.

The next installment in the Fable franchise is being built with the ForzaTech engine, which as the name implies, is the foundation beneath Xbox’s popular Forza racing games.

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Nintendo has perhaps the longest, most illustrious track record in the history of the games industry, so if you're hoping to learn the best ways to design and create your own video games, you'd be hard pressed to find a better instructor. While the gaming giant has released titles like Super Mario Maker 2 to give players a chance at designing their own creations, Nintendo hopes to build on that with Game Builder Garage.

Game Builder Garage takes concepts explored in the Super Mario Maker games, which are largely centered on design and experimentation, and brings them to a new level. Now, you not only design games, but learn the basics of visual programming with step-by-step lessons straight from Nintendo. 

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Today, as part of the ongoing Epic v. Apple court case, Apple counsel Rich Doren, while cross examining Epic engineer Andrew Grant about a Minecraft Earth-related email chain between Epic employees, asked a very important question.

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Nintendo doesn’t always need a big Direct to announce a new first-party game. Sometimes they can just drop a trailer and say, hey, here’s a new thing, which is exactly what just happened with Game Builder Garage.

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Game Builder Garage is heading to the Nintendo Switch. The creation software teaches you to make games and lets you share them with others.

The post Nintendo’s Game Builder Garage Helps You Make and Share Games appeared first on Siliconera.

Game Builder Garage comes to Nintendo Switch June 11

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The Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit continues, and as the previous two days have shown, it's clear the U.S. Court system wasn't quite prepared to see how closely guarded gaming secrets can be. Embargoes don't matter in a court of law, and one of the many documents that have become public shows what's on the horizon for the elusive Dead Island 2. In addition to it looking like Dead Island 2 will be an Epic Games Store exclusive, it looks possible that the next Saints Row could be as well. 

During the trial's proceedings, a document from 2019 came into play. Now keep in mind, that's two years ago. A lot can happen in two years, and Dead Island 2 has been in development limbo since its announcement. More than that, the Saints Row inclusion technically has already come to pass because 2020 is when Saints Row 3: Remastered was released exclusively to the Epic Games Store. 

Talofa is seeking a Game Server Engineer to join the team of its newest social running game in development, Run To My Heart. ...

The list of lovely looking action-y games I was looking forward to this month took a big hit when Deathloop got delayed, but thank goodness action cat RPG Biomutant is still coming. I'd worry that I've jinxed it now, but today's new gameplay and character creator videos have me feeling pretty confident that Expreiment 101 aren't going to pull a last-minute emergency delay. Biomutant still looks slick as heck and it's launching later this month.

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The list of lovely looking action-y games I was looking forward to this month took a big hit when Deathloop got delayed, but thank goodness action cat RPG Biomutant is still coming. I'd worry that I've jinxed it now, but today's new gameplay and character creator videos have me feeling pretty confident that Expreiment 101 aren't going to pull a last-minute emergency delay. Biomutant still looks slick as heck and it's launching later this month.

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Good things come in small packages

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Mass Effect Legendary Edition - which bundles up remastered versions of BioWare's beloved space opera trilogy - is a little over a week away from release, and, ahead of its arrival, the studio has detailed frame rate and resolution options for all platforms.

As revealed in BioWare's latest blog post, players on console will have the option to switch between two separate gameplay modes - Favour Quality and Favour Framerate - at any time.

Both are fairly self explanatory, with Favour Quality designed to achieve the "highest visual fidelity possible in exchange for a lower target framerate" and Favour Framerate delivering the "highest framerate possible by scaling native resolution and reducing some graphical features".

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Metalhead Software, the development studio behind the popular Super Mega Baseball franchise, has been acquired by Electronic Arts. The Canada-based studio was founded in 2009 and has been working on the arcade-style Super Mega Baseball franchise since before the original entry launched in 2014. Now, EA Sports and Metalhead are joining forces to not only grow the Super Mega Baseball franchise, but also develop new gaming and sports experiences.

The most recent game released by Metalhead is Super Mega Baseball 3, which launched in 2020. In a post on the Super Mega Baseball subreddit, Metalhead Software said that the team had already begun transitioning to the next project, but that a small title update 7 for Super Mega Baseball 3 is still underway, and that it will have details soon. In that same post, the studio confirmed that it will continue working as Metalhead Software with the same team in the same city with the same development spirit it has had since its inception. The biggest difference, according to that post, is that it will be able to leverage the technology, expertise, and marketing power of EA Sports. The studio hopes this will enable it to, "dig into some ambitious new projects."

PC modders have done something to Resident Evil Village’s resident tall lady, Countess Alcina Dimitrescu, but I can’t figure out exactly what. Can you? Take your time. I know: It’s a real head scratcher!

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EA has purchased Super Mega Baseball developer Metalhead Software. The two companies will combine to grow Metalhead’s Super Mega Baseball franchise, marking EA’s first venture back into the realm of Major League Baseball since losing the rights to 2K in 2005. EA last published MVP 07: NCAA Baseball in 2007.

Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, so it remains to be seen how much money EA spent on the acquisition.

The Super Mega Baseball franchise began with 2014’s first game, garnering high praise for its easy to learn controls and difficulty options. Super Mega Baseball 3, released in May 2020, similarly features an unlicensed take on baseball that isn’t as deep as MLB The Show, but is nonetheless fun and interesting to play. Despite the cartoonish avatars of baseball players, the series is less NFL Blitz and more accessible simulation, but doesn't feature any actual licensed MLB teams or products.

EA has been busy acquiring multiple studios known for their work in sports games. EA acquired Dirt series developer Codemasters for $1.2 billion in early 2021, acknowledging plans to release a new racing game every year. Codemasters also owns the Project cars and GRID franchises. EA Sports previously announced its return to developing officially licensed NCAA football games for the first time since 2013.

Patch 1.3.3 has been pulled and we are reverting back to 1.3.1 until it's fixed.

EA's acquisition spree continues with its latest big buy: Super Mega Baseball developer Metalhead. ...

Microsoft's Game Pass Ultimate service is a great way to unlock over a hundred games for PC and Xbox, and current subscribers can now pick up a four-month subscription for just £20 / $30 - which is £13 / $15 less than the list price for a three-month sub. Here's how it works.

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Let's be honest, Mew is the one Pokémon you need to find in New Pokémon Snap. The latest iteration of the 'gotta photograph 'em all' game on Nintendo Switch is nothing short of a delight, and the upgrades to the in-game photography make capturing these pocket monsters a real treat. For those wanting the best of the best, here's a quick guide on where you can find Mew in Pokémon Snap. 

Where Is Mew In Pokémon Snap?

When you first start off in your new Pokémon adventure, you'll learn how to take the perfect snapshot, how to travel to different locations, and how the time of day can impact what sort of creatures you meet out in the wild. That's an important lesson to learn when trying to capture the elusive Mew because this particular find can only be located in the Founja Jungle at night. 

PC users can crank the frame rate up to 240 fps

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In this classic 2000 postmortem, then-Angel Studios engineer Todd Meynink recounts the trials and tribulations Angel faced in porting Capcom's Resident Evil 2 to the Nintendo 64. ...

Back 4 Blood isn't shying away from comparisons to co-operative zombie FPS classic Left 4 Dead - developer Turtle Rock Studios is responsible for both, after all - but the team is aiming to deliver more than a carbon copy of its earlier game. And one of its innovations comes in the form of an intriguing deck-building card system, which it's now detailed in its latest trailer.

Borrowing one of Left 4 Dead's most innovative features - an AI-driven Game Director - Back 4 Blood works behind the scenes to monitor players' "health, actions, and choices", and responds by, as Turtle Rock puts it, "choreographing the world around them".

However, judging by the game's new trailer, Back 4 Blood's Director is able to pull from a much wider set of variables and is considerably more transparent about what these are at the start of each play-through. Before a level kicks off, you see, players are shown the Game Director hand of Corruption Cards, each of which influences how the proceeding action will unfold.

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Now you can choose which characters appear on the cover

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Update: May 6, 9:45 a.m. ET: Housemarque released patch 1.3.4 overnight. Here are the notes.

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Sliders are here to stay, though Humble says it's likely to iterate on the feature once the Humble Bundle redesign is out the door. ...

Buying up Metalhead Software and Super Mega Baseball, EA returns to a sport it last published for consoles in 2007

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