Power-A Joy-con Charging Dock | $15 | Amazon

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Fortnite has served up a syrupy earworm celebrating its fictional Butter Barn pancake restaurant, and it crepes on anything else you'll hear today.

The Wild West-themed Butter Barn restaurant appeared on Fortnite's map at the start of its current season. It's where you'll find battle pass character Mancake, the chain's mascot/head chef/sole patron who the game describes as "a flapjack forged on a griddle of rage".

Visit the Butter Barn and you'll hear a few bars of its theme song played as a jingle. I've dropped in there a few times just to hear it since, in Fortnite, you never know when things are going to disappear.

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This is a standalone article recapping everything I learned from 'Bioshock Infinite: A level analysis from a gameplay point of view,' my previous publications series. ...

Omeda Studio has secured $2.2 million in funding to develop a new cross-platform MOBA using the assets of Epic's defunct MOBA, Paragon. ...

Professor and game developer Nicholas O'Brien argues for subtlety in player choice and consequence, versus the "Clementine will remember that" route: "By overtly validating a players choice as 'mattering' you unintentionally subvert their agency," he says. ...

Funimation is one of the four companies working with Falcom on this global joint project.

The post Trails of Cold Steel Will Receive an Anime Adaptation in 2022 appeared first on Siliconera.

The independent game publisher, Devolver Digital, is well-known for its crazy antics and insane marketing stunts. From its weirdly iconic E3 press conferences, to its gag games like Devolver Bootleg –the publisher has proven time and time again that they have a sense of humour and aren’t afraid to break the mold on how a gaming studio is supposed to act. But did you know they also have a ton of great games?

Devolver Digital has published a ton of incredible and successful titles including Enter the Gungeon, the Serious Sam series, and Hotline Miami. They even published one of the biggest titles to release last year — Fall Guys!

While I’m sure you’ve heard of, and maybe even played some of the games above, Devolver has worked on a lot of great games, so we wanted to showcase a few their titles you might have missed.

Here are five Devolver Digital games that may have flown under your radar.

As previously reported, strategic shooter Tom Clancy's The Division 2 is not quite ready to hang up its holsters just yet. While many thought the team at Massive Entertainment was getting ready to sunset the team-based merc shooter, the developer announced that 2021 would see a fresh run of content for the title's dedicated playerbase.

Speaking in a new blog post titled "The Road Ahead", Massive revealed that this year will see a brand new game mode arrive in The Division 2's playlist. While no details were forthcoming, the mode is listed as "entirely new to the franchise." In addition, the team is working on new ways for players to progress their in-game operatives, with hopes of offering more in the way of both variety and viability for The Division 2's builds and classes.

Hello! Welcome back to Music Week. Aamir Mehar explains how Zelda did for him what Chopin couldn't.

I've come across so much great music in the video game medium. Darren Korb and Ashley Barrett created beautiful and reflective work for Transistor, and while I have yet to play Chrono Cross, the tracks I've heard from it (by Yasunori Mitsuda) are dazzling. Nobuo Uematsu's work for Square has stayed with me to this day: Roses of May is as charming a tune as its name implies, while there is a menace to Succession of Witches and a subtle, disturbing feel to Listen To The Cries of the Planet.

While I liked music, I never really tried to actually play it myself; I had no real experience with instruments outside of music classes in school, lessons that never caught my interest for even a quarter beat. Perhaps the only detail that stuck with me, when it came to instruments, was my sister learning to play a simplistic portion of Aerith's Theme on her keyboard at home, and then teaching me to play it.

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I never want to find out the true origins of Whacked-Out Entertainment’s Oblivion NPC Dialogue videos. To find out would be to break the magic. Because this is magic in its purest form. It’s a guy called Greg Thompson, and his relationship with a disembodied voice, all presented as if scenes from The Elder Scrolls IV:…

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Video game players are expected to have spent an approximate $20 billion on in-game loot boxes by 2025. That's the finding of a new report from the number-crunchers at Juniper Research.

As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Juniper Research ascertains that around 230 million players - or roughly 5% of the entire gaming community - will have laid down dollar for some form of "mystery" microtransaction, with the institute predicting an average loot box revenue growth of around 5% each year - though the report does suggest that sales will inevitably fall with players growing weary of the mechanic, as well as the ever-increasing likelihood of global government legislation.

"Loot boxes in their traditional form are often considered exploitative; leading to increased legislative scrutiny," said Juniper Research's Nick Hunt in the sobering report. "We expect to see game publishers react to this in future by changing loot box formats, in order to keep them compelling and outside the legal realms of gambling."

Unsurprisingly, mobile platforms are expected to make up the lion's share of all loot box sales, with China and other Far Eastern territories responsible for around half of all loot box sales. North America sits in second place when it comes to microtransaction expenditure.

The cute Sinnoh water starter Pokemon Piplup will get all the attention ahead of the Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl releases.

The post Project Pochama Gives the Spotlight to the Pokemon Piplup appeared first on Siliconera.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury + 2 Socks | $60 | Walmart

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Monsters in the Dark: The Making of X-COM: UFO Defense tells the story of the early years of legendary strategy game designer Julian Gollop and the making of the original X-COM, and is funding now on Kickstarter. In this excerpt from the book, MicroProse’s acquisition by Spectrum Holobyte places the game (known as…

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[Update: Forza Horizon 4 launched today on Steam and there's a free car for all platforms. You can get the 2019 Porsche 911 GT3 RS if you sign into your Xbox profile before March 14 at 10:00 am Pacific.]

Playground Games' crowd-favorite racing series Forza Horizon is coming to Steam. The studio is collaborating with Sumo Digital to bring the latest entry, Forza Horizon 4, to Steam on March 9, 2021.

If you've held off with the Windows 10 version, there you go. The Steam edition of Forza Horizon 4 will have cross-play, so Xbox One, Windows 10, and even Android players (using the cloud) can compete.

For those of you who don't closely follow the series but might be inclined to change your ways with this news, Forza Horizon 4 is the one in Britain that leans into shifting seasons. As our dear friend Brett said in his review at the time, "winter can be a pain in the ass and not nearly as enjoyable as the other three seasons," but it's the "only season that feels truly unique and actually affects the way driving works."

DLC like the Hot Wheels Legends Car Pack and expansions like Fortune Island and LEGO Speed Champions will be sold separately on Steam, but that's business as usual. I wasn't expecting otherwise.

The collaboration event has been extended and will now last until late May.

The post Neon Genesis Evangelion Tokyo Skytree Event Extended appeared first on Siliconera.

Valheim came out at the start of February and has been taking the survival community, and beyond, by storm. But right now it's squarely housed on PC: something developer Iron Gate may want to rectify at some point. Enter Panic Button to save the day?

Speaking to Nintendo Life in the context of bringing Apex Legends to Switch, they mused on wanting to take up the task. The famed studio that has handled many successful Switch ports like Doom, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein, and Subnautica, expressed interest in a Valheim on Switch. After being asked if they could bring "any game" to Switch without limitations, one of the developers raised their hands.

Head of Production Dan Hernberg explains: "I'm not sure if this is my 'any game pick' but, right now I’m playing way too much Valheim and I would love to port that to Switch." But Technical Director Andy Boggs and Respawn's Chad Grenier also chimed in, saying they'd love to see Bloodborne and Dyson Sphere Program on Switch respectively.

At this point, in Panic Button I trust. If there's a game that exists and it's remotely feasible to bring it to Switch, I'd give them a call.

Panic Button And Respawn On The Challenge Of Bringing Apex Legends On Switch [Nintendo Life]

There's a Turbo Kid video game in the works.

Turbo Kid is the superb, super violent B-movie superhero cult hit comedy film set in an alternate 1997 post-apocalyptic earth. It stars The Kid, who teams up with a mysterious girl called Apple to defeat a warlord played wonderfully by Michael Ironside. The music is great. The film is great. You should watch it!

Now, there's a Turbo Kid video game. It's a Metroidvania in which you play as The Kid, fighting across the wasteland. It's developed by Outerminds (best known for making YouTuber PewDiePie's games). Based on the trailer, below, it's got loads of pixel art gore - as it should.

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Over 500,000 tickets were sold during the film's first day at the box office.

The post Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Movie Revenue Over 82 Million Yen First Day at Box Office appeared first on Siliconera.

Well, here's one story I didn't expect I'd ever be covering. Canadian developer Outerminds has announced it is currently hard at work on a video game adaptation of over-the-top action movie Turbo Kid, set for release some seven years after the movie's premiere.

For those less inclined, Turbo Kid was a low-budget Canadian flick produced during a movie-making zeitgeist which saw an abundance of "'80s grindhouse movies" that - while capturing the spirit of the era - weren't really like '80s grindhouse movies. Set in the post-apocalyptic future of 1997, Turbo Kid is the story of an orphaned BMX bandit - The Kid - who battles the armies of warlord Zeus (Michael Ironside) in order to liberate the wasteland and save the (extremely excitable) gal of his dreams, Apple.

Well, It's a bit like TimeRider: The Adventures of Lyle Swann, I guess.

Koei Tecmo’s popular Dynasty Warriors series is getting a live-action cinematic version. It looks wild.

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1988's MicroProse Soccer is now on Steam.

MicroProse Soccer was developed by Sensible Software and is the forerunner to the UK studio's hugely influential 16-bit classic Sensible Soccer. The original version launched on the Commodore 64, but it was ported to a myriad of systems, including the Amiga, Amstrad, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and ZX Spectrum.

MicroProse Soccer was notable for simulating a full 11-a-side game of football with a top-down view, and included a simple control scheme that revolved around tapping or holding down the fire button for passes and shots. You could push diagonally to curl the ball - an after-touch feature that would go on to be used in Sensible Soccer.

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Apex Legends is finally getting its Switch port later today, and ahead of its release we now have some idea how it will run on the platform.

In an interview with Famitsu, game director Chad Grenier along with Andy Boggs and Dan Hanhberg of Panic Button (the studio responsible for the port) spoke a little about the game's expected performance on Switch. According to Boggs, Apex Legends will run at 720p when docked and 576p in handheld, with a frame-rate of 30FPS in both modes.

Given that the Switch port will come with cross-play, some players have expressed concerns that Switch players will be at a disadvantage against other platforms (particularly given the game is capped at 60FPS on console and 144FPS on PC, with ways to get around the latter). As detailed in the Famitsu interview there will be an option to disable cross-play, so you can choose whether to pool with other Switch users or give yourself a real challenge against PC and console. Hopefully the Switch-only pool will have plenty of players for matchmaking.

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Take a first look at some stills from the upcoming Yasuke anime.

The post Anime Samurai Series Yasuke to Release on Netflix in April appeared first on Siliconera.

We all love Zagreus, right? Right?!

He's the broody protagonist you either enjoy or don't mind playing, but for a second there, we almost had a more boisterous hero. Speaking to The Verge, developer Supergiant Games explains that Theseus, one of the game's most contentious enemies, almost made the cut.

It would have dealt with Theseus delving into the Crete labyrinth, building the hero myth as you played. The team notes: "So kind of cerebrally, he was interesting. But when we were trying to bring him to life as a protagonist, he has this risk of being kind of very generic. But as soon as we start adding specific detail to him, he just doesn't really feel like Theseus anymore."

Here's the crux of why the change was made. Studio co-founder Amir Rao elaborates, stating: "[Creative Director Greg Kasavin] sort of had this idea that we could probably keep everything in the game, but recast it as Zagreus. These different ideas, all these different characters, they all kind of came together. Within I think a day or two he had convinced everyone that it was a better idea."

I mean, to be real, Hades probably would have been fine with a different main character. The interpersonal relationships could have been just as deep and the gameplay could have been 100% the same, as Zagreus was like mechanical modeling clay for whatever the developers wanted him to do.

It's nice that it turned out the way it did, but Supergiant likely had a hit on their hands either way. And that Theseus idea is still fire. A sequel, perhaps?

Hades almost starred its worst character [The Verge]

Van, Agnès, Feri, and Aaron are the first four characters introduced for Falcom's upcoming RPG.

The post Get To Know the Main Characters in Kuro no Kiseki appeared first on Siliconera.

Legendary developer Nihon Falcom has announced that it is teaming with a quartet of production companies to produce an anime adaptation of adventure series The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. The new series is expected to launch on TV in 2022.

Details are incredibly thin on the ground at this pre-production stage, but the title would suggest that the series will follow a similar narrative to the Trails of Cold Steel series - also known as the "Erebonia arc" - which began in 2013 on the PS3 and PS Vita and concluded in the fall of 2018 with the release of Trails of Cold Steel IV on PS4.

The project will see Falcom team with its Asian distributor UserJoy Technology, renown anime distributor Funimation Global Group, anime production company NADA Holdings, and finally content funding affiliate SYOU.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel TV anime project announced [Gematsu]

It’s that time again! Time for large, expensive statues that cost lots of money. This time, we have two of them: a life-sized Rei Ayanami, and a human-sized Evangelion Unit-01.

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UPDATE: The Bundestag has amended its announcement about the passing of reform of the Youth Protection Act to remove mention of loot boxes.

It appears the Bundestag made a mistake with its own announcement of the legal reform. The announcement, which can be viewed on the Bundestag's website, no longer includes the line: "It is also planned to deactivate cost traps such as 'loot boxes' by default."

The amendment does stipulate that age ratings will be expanded to include descriptors for various problematic mechanics, including "cost traps". The idea here is to indicate risk if it was not taken into account in the age classification.

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Microsoft will reportedly hold a video presentation this Thursday, 11th March, to detail how Bethesda and its parent company ZeniMax will be folded into its portfolio of Xbox studios.

That's according to a Venturebeat report, which states Microsoft will soon confirm the event publicly.

The event is not described as a games showcase - so don't expect to see much of under-wraps projects like Starfield.

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From Furoshiki cloth to Shuin stamp notebooks, the cafe will sell merchandise that fits the game's Japanese aesthetic.

The post Monster Hunter Rise Capcom Cafe Collab Merch Features Japanese Cultural Items appeared first on Siliconera.

The Mario apocalypse continues.

As most of you know by now, several games, one device, and even one instance of Wii U online play functionality are going away on March 31 for several Mario games. Even an old Fire Emblem game is being removed from the eShop for good measure! But now, it's come to light that The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 on Netflix will be removed from some regions on that same date.

As a note, the US doesn't even have the show, but for the regions that do, there's an obvious reason for this. CBS All Access has been revamped into Paramount+, which is where the shows will be headed.

It's just another casualty of the streaming wars, as Netflix continues to be stripped for parts and attempt to rely on its original programming to weather the storm. They planned for this! But it's still hilarious timing given everything else that's happening to Mario on March 31, 2021.

Mevans [Twitter via Nintendo Life]