After announcing in December that it was coming, the Pokémon anime finally aired its last Ash and Pikachu episode in Japan. The episode won’t be airing in English for some time as the anime is tied to a Netflix deal that releases batches of episodes periodically, so if you’re curious to see how their journey concludes…
The Mercenaries DLC will appear in Resident Evil 4 Remake for free starting on April 7, 2023. This mode also existed in the original version of the game. It is a lot more action-packed than the main campaign, and it focuses on killing enemies as fast as possible to get a high score. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]
Since its original incarnation in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Resident Evil games have featured a The Mercenaries minigame or something similar. In Resident Evil 4, the version of The Mercenaries allowed you to play as HUNK and the Giant Chainsaw Man. It also featured the unlockable Handcannon weapon. Until Capcom reveals more information on this iteration of The Mercenaries though, it’s unclear just what characters and weapons will be in it.
Resident Evil 4 Remake is a revamped version of original 2005 game. Both the characters and gameplay are re-imaginations of the original. For example, there is a higher emphasis on parrying with your knife in the remake. The story still revolves around secret agent Leon S. Kennedy and his mission to rescue the president's daughter Ashley, though. You can read our review for it here.
Resident Evil 4 Remake is available for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC. The Mercenaries DLC for Resident Evil 4 Remake will come out for free on April 7, 2023.
The Pokemon Company will run a Pikachu Campaign at Pokemon Centers in Japan from April 22, 2023 to June 30, 2023. During that time, you will be able to see and purchase a wide variety of Pikachus at the stores. As well, a serial code that players can use to redeem a Pikachu in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet will be available. [Thanks, Game Watch!]
There are various stages to the Pikachu Campaign. The first part is a My Pikachu doll, which will cost 1,650 JPY (around $12.60). These Pikachu dolls all have slight differences to their expressions, body parts, and tails. You’ll be able to choose the perfect Pikachu for yourself. The catch, however, is that they are not available in the online shops.
If you want to make your My Pikachu purchase more special, you can participate in the Pika Pika Forest or Pika Pika Tree attraction. It will cost 1,650 JPY. It recreates the idea of meeting your own Pikachu in the forest, but you will not be able to pick a My Pikachu yourself. Once you have a My Pikachu, you can create a name tag for it. You will be able to make a name tag from April 22, 2023 to May 31, 2023.
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Koei Tecmo teased what people can expect in each early Atelier Ryza 3 patch, and depth of field fixes and graphics are priorities. The company took to the official site to detail what will come in updates. The first one will focus on the depth of field on every platform. After that, there will be more specific graphical fixes for each platform.
The first Atelier Ryza 3 depth of field update will appear in a patch for the PS4, PS5, Switch, and PC. Koei Tecmo noted that Gust’s adjustments will make the effect “weaker.” The goal, however, is to make it more playable when someone is in some of the game’s larger environments.
After that, there will be two other kinds of updates. One Atelier Ryza 3 patch on the PS4, PS5, and Switch will add graphics options. Koei Tecmo didn’t explain what that will entail or how comprehensive these will be. With the PC version, there will be even more Atelier Ryza 3 depth of field changes. Koei Tecmo noted there will be varying degrees to select, rather than either having it “on” or “off.”
Atelier Ryza 3 is available on the PS4, PS5, Switch, and PC. There's no word yet on when the first depth of field patch could appear.
People now playing the Resident Evil 4 remake on the PS5 may have noticed a bug involving flickering lights. Capcom issued a statement noting it is aware of the problem. It also confirmed that it will release a patch that will fix that issue in Resident Evil 4, while detailing how to mitigate the issue in the meantime.
Capcom didn’t share a video of how the Resident Evil 4 flickering lights bug looks on the PS5. It only noted that it will show up on the bottom half of the screen. It noted that there are three things that can help in the meantime.
The first possible solution is to save. After you have, go to the PS5 home menu and close the game out. Then, choose to restart it.
The other two ways to potentially get rid of this problem while waiting for the Resident Evil 4 remake patch is to try adjusting two options. One is to turn on the Camera’s Motion Blur. The other is to turn off the Display’s Depth of Field. Capcom only mentioned doing one or the other.
The Resident Evil 4 remake is available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC, and the PS5 flickering lights patch is coming.
Everywhere (not to be confused with Everything) was a big fat question mark at last year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live. It comes from Build A Rocket Boy, the studio founded by ex-GTA boss Leslie Benzies, and despite its cryptic reveal trailer, AliceB theorised it was some kind of Robloxlike. Turns out her hunch was correct - Everywhere is a platform that allows players to create their own custom content. To show off what the tools can do, Benzies and the team unveiled MindsEye, an episodic “blockbuster” adventure available inside Everywhere. A game set inside a game, if you will.
UPDATE 27/03/23: Here are the times when the Wii U and 3DS eShop stores will close:
Last chance to snap up those exclusives!
ORIGINAL STORY 24/03/23: Nintendo fans, this is your final reminder that the Wii U and 3DS eShop stores will close on Monday 27th March.
Bandai Namco has released a video showing off Jack-8 in Tekken 8.
The hard-hitting Tekken AI returns in the upcoming fighting game with what looks like a stance ability and new voice work - and by that I mean he grunts and snarls as he smashes up his opponent.
I love Jack's new rage art, which sees him fire a huge railgun point blank into his opponent's face. Oh, and stick to the end for a surprise stare from Jack with the visor. Truly terrifying stuff.
Director Chad Stahelski, who is currently promoting his latest film John Wick: Chapter 4, wants to find a way to "push the colour palette" in the upcoming Ghost of Tsushima movie.
Speaking to DiscussingFilm, the director was asked how he was planning to approach the adaptation of Sucker Punch's samurai epic.
"Ghost of Tsushima is a really interesting story if you really dive into the tale of Jin Sakai and what the film is really about. And you tie him to these amazing visuals," Stahelski replied.
Blizzard is investigating reports from some players that the Diablo 4 beta is causing GPU issues.
The reports revolve around GPUs apparently overheating while running the action RPG's recent early access on PC.
Eurogamer reader "jonzie23" was among those who reported a problem with their GPU while running Diablo 4 last weekend.
Genshin Impact developer MiHoYo has announced that Honkai: Star Rail will launch on April 26 for PC, iOS, and Android. PlayStation 4 and 5 versions are also currently in development.
The game takes place after the events of Honkai Impact 3rd on a space train called the Astral Express. The protagonist is planted with something called Stellaron, which is defined as a destructive seed that will eventually bring disaster. Somewhat similar to Genshin Impact, players will unlock new characters to join their party as they progress through the story.
Honkai: Star Rail features a vast universe filled with a variety of different cultures and environments, such as the ice-covered Jarilo-VI and the eastern fantasy-inspired flagship Xianzhou Luofu.
The game also focuses on turn-based combat rather than the real-time combat found in Genshin Impact, as well as familiar microtransactions and gatcha features.
In IGN’s Honkai: Star Rail closed beta preview, we said: “Honkai is shaping up to be a well-made game with an interesting enough universe, story, and characters making me want to come back to it and see it evolve over time.”
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He's been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
Players hoping to join the Diablo 4 open beta this weekend must prepare themselves for “unprecedented" queue times as the developers test online infrastructure.
The official Diablo Twitter account reiterated Blizzard's comments last week that a beta is about testing functionality instead of just letting people play early. "As we prepare to open the gates to Sanctuary, we'd like to remind our players that the Diablo 4 open beta is a test to ensure a smooth launch," it said (below).
"We expect unprecedented traffic and queue times as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding."
As we prepare to open the gates to Sanctuary, we'd like to remind our players that the #DiabloIV Open Beta is a test to ensure a smooth launch.
We expect unprecedented traffic and queue times as a result. We appreciate your patience & understanding.
📜: https://t.co/Q4Q3Manehg
Diablo 4 is the next entry in Blizzard’s iconic and highly influential RPG series. While each Diablo game has had its own impact on the industry at large — with Diablo 2 popularizing the genre abroad, and Diablo 3’s real money marketplace not forgotten — Diablo 4 moves towards modernization.
Adopting mechanics found in MMORPGs, the world of Sanctuary has changed in some surprising ways. While Blizzard has shown off World Event Quests and World Bosses that feel oddly similar to Smilegate’s Lost Ark, the developer has gone a step further to change how some pivotal systems in the series work. And some of these quality-of-life improvements have perhaps made the biggest splash in how players can approach their endgame builds.
Here are some of the most significant changes we’ve found in our hands-on experience with the Diablo 4 beta.
No longer do players need to rely on RNG to add sockets to their Rare or Legendary items. Instead, with the right amount of gold and materials, the Occultist can add sockets to your weapons, armor, and accessories.
Zack Snyder has announced that a three day celebration of his DC trilogy, consisting of Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Justice League, will be held in April with all proceeds going to charity.
Taking place from April 28 to April 30, the Full Circle event will be held in support of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Snyder himself will host the weekend of screenings in honour of his daughter, Autumn Snyder, who passed away at the age of 20. The director's cut of each film will be shown before Snyder participates in a Q&A with special guests that will be livestreamed too.
The screenings on April 28 and 29 will take place at the Ahmanson Auditorium at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena while the April 30 screening will take place at Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood.
"We’re honoured to participate in this fundraiser in support of suicide prevention and to help increase awareness of this important issue in our community,” said Karen Hofmann, president of the ArtCenter College of Design.
Tickets to the events are now on sale and are available for each individual day. Entry to day one costs $150, entry to date two costs $150, and entry to day three costs $175.
Snyder had teased a "full circle" announcement earlier in March in an incredibly cryptic tweet, causing fans to speculate wildly about what could be coming. Alas, now we know.
Friday’s news of Lance Reddick passing hit me hard. Writing this piece without crying has been impossible. But I want to – I need to – talk about Reddick’s impact on the gaming community. Reddick voiced Zavala in the Destiny series and Sylens from Horizon Zero Dawn, and both Bungie and Guerrilla Games issued statements in tribute to Reddick’s fantastic work in their games.
Not only was Reddick an incredible talent, he was also a passionate gamer. He showed so much love for Zavala, Destiny, and Destiny 2. I remember seeing him talking about Destiny on Twitter, and his smiling face as he sent video messages to the community members cheering them on, or throwing casual crap their way.
I specifically remember seeing a video of Reddick showing his “Saturday vibes”, where he was grinding in Destiny, surrounded by his dogs and relaxing on his couch completely engrossed in his game. That one stuck with me because it was just so familiar, so relatable, because that’s how I spend a lot of my weekends. Just playing my favorite video games. Seeing a voice actor who brought one of the key characters in Destiny playing the game with true delight was something I didn’t know I’d connect with so well.
Gaming allows so many people to find each other, that otherwise they would not meet. I played Destiny on Xbox One with my best friends from high school, who I reconnected with through our love for gaming. I met several other good friends through Destiny. Whether it was people finding me through my Twitch stream and vice versa, or if it was me finding a friendly player in Destiny I wanted to add as a friend, we became connected.
If you’re like me and feel life is entirely too short to spend on important, self-congratulatory games (or people, for that matter), might I recommend 2020’s Sludge Life? Once exclusive to the Epic Games Store, it arrived on Steam about a year later where you could buy it for 15 bucks. Right now, though, you can grab…
The PS5 sold out for years. Now it’s in stock and, shockingly, currently on sale for the first time since the latest-gen hardware was released. But the discount only goes until April 6, and who knows how long these cheaper bundles will last.
Just yesterday, developer FromSoftware rolled out a new Elden Ring update that introduced ray tracing (RTX). It’s been a highly requested feature since the game’s February 25, 2022 launch. Unfortunately, just hours after patch 1.09 dropped, RTX is breaking the popular Soulslike in all kinds of ways, from crashing the…
Do you think you know everything there is to know about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? Then, you can consider participating in the official nationwide quiz about it. Nintendo will hold a The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Nationwide Quiz Event from April 7-9, 2023. It will be available in both Japanese and English.
In total, there will be four rounds. You can participate in any or even all of them, and your highest score will be the final result. In order to participate in the quiz, you need to have a Nintendo Account. Here are the times for the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Nationwide Quiz:
The rankings will be announced at 10 PM on April 9. These are all JST, so for those outside of Japan, the quiz will be at 6 AM and PM PT/9 AM and PM ET.
If you use your phone to scan the QR code on the website for the quiz, you can look at some practice questions. They are all multiple choice. Questions range from identifying an enemy from a picture to trivia about the monsters and geography of Hyrule.
The Pokemon Company International revealed the name and logo for the new anime series, and it will be named Pokemon Horizons: The Series. It appeared along with a new trailer. Taito Okiura, vice-president of marketing for the Pokemon Company International, said the series will begin "premiering outside of Japan later this year." There's no exact 2023 release date yet.
Pokemon Horizons will follow dual protagonists Liko and Roy as they explore the mysteries of the world. Liko is a girl with a mysterious pendant and is accompanied by her partner Sprigatito, while Roy wishes to challenge Legendary Pokemon along with his Fuecoco. These four will be joined by a group known as the 'Rising Volt Tacklers' consisting of Friede the leader, Murdock the chef, Orla the mechanic and Mollie the healer. Also appearing are Amethio the Explorer and mascot-suited streamer Nidothing. The trailer also showed the involvement of a black Rayquaza, which viewers may recognise as the shiny variant from the games.
You can watch the trailer for the new Pokemon anime below:
[embed]https://youtu.be/_c_hMehCORQ[/embed]
While it does have a name, the new Pokemon anime series has not had a location confirmed. However the appearance of the Paldean starters and an academy-like setting may lead some to speculate that it takes place at least partly in Paldea, the setting of the recent Scarlet and Violet games.
As of March 31, 2023, Mirai Akari will retire from her activities as a Vtuber. She will stream for the last time on that date. In her announcement tweet, she apologized for how sudden this retirement is and wants to discuss her feelings with her fans during her final stream.
Her announcement tweet contained four images that explain why she wants to retire from being a Vtuber. She stated that she isn’t certain if this is the right choice, but she made this decision after thinking about it for a long time. Though she wants to continue being a Vtuber—everything from streaming to making videos to singing—the main reason she’s retiring is due to differences in values between herself and her managers.
She stated that since Mirai Akari is a virtual Vtuber avatar, she’s not actually disappearing. All of her archives will remain on her YouTube channel. She will no longer be posting anything as Akari, but she will continue to support all of her Vtuber friends and her fans. At the end of her letter, she thanked all of her fans, Vtuber friends, clients, and the staff who helped her to create her avatar. She also apologized for her lack of updates on her YouTube channel. There are several videos that she recorded prior to her decision to retire, so she will upload them before her final day.
Bandai Namco officially revealed the Tekken 8 version of Jack, who is known here as Jack-8. However, we already had an idea he was in the game and on the way. He first showed up in the Lars Alexandersson character trailer. However, this time he gets to stand in the spotlight.
Jack has appeared in pretty much every Tekkeninstallment, and the naming scheme always follows the one used by Jack-8 in Tekken 8. The original “Jack” appeared in the first game. Since then, almost everyone featured a number at the end. The exception is Street Fighter x Tekken’s Jack-X.
Here's the new trailer showing off Jack-8. In it, he faces off against returning fighter King.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b4MyA6wPJI&ab_channel=BandaiNamcoEntertainmentAmerica
Also, this is the list of all of the Tekken 8 character trailers that appeared before the Jack-8 reveal.
“Imagine someone saying ‘We need you to make a trailer for our movie, but we've only got half of the sets and props ready…” says Tim Bevan de Lange, Creative Director at Realtime Nordic, a studio that makes, specifically, video game trailers. “...and we haven’t actually shot anything, so you’ll need to do that yourself. Some of the actors won't come out of their trailers. One of them will but if you shoot him from the front you realise he's got no eyes, but don't show the audience that. It's not intentional, he's getting them fixed. Also can you film it twice, for different streaming platforms? Make a really good version for Netflix and a slightly worse looking one for Quibi.”
Every so often a game trailer comes along that makes me think, hang on, that was bloody brilliant! I bet some people made that! Most recently it was Creative Assembly’s Immortal Empires trailer. Well, I’ve been digging around and I’m happy to report that yes, although I’m the first one to just see a trailer as an algorithm trying to snatch my coin purse away like a manure-encrusted Victorian ne’er-do-well, game trailers are made by humans. They're often humans who do it as as specific job, either in-house at a developer or as an outside agency like Realtime Nordic. Enlightened and enthralled, I asked some of them about what went into the strange space that is making the trailers for your favourite games.
The Mercenaries DLC mode will be added to the Resident Evil 4 remake, for free, on April 7th. The full game launched today, so by the time you’re done gorging on the remake’s fancy additions, the new mode should be ready. Hopefully, you’re still in the mood to roundhouse kick waves of infected in two weeks' time.
I can't remember if I've already banged on about what a terrible, unhelpful term "metroidvania" is, so let's skip past to say that Angel's Gear reminds me of the one Castlevania game I've ever played.
It's partly the tone: a compelling blend of gothic and biomechanical horror, with a 90s game boy goriness that's cartoony enough to feel colourful rather than repulsive. "Camp" isn't the right word, but a hint of melodrama gives the story severity without self-seriousness. I mean, within the first minute of the game, your soldier goes from a terrified Normandy-style amphibious assault on a fortified metal church to seeing their war made irrelevant when the moon explodes. The whole thing is kind of metal, to be honest.
Resident Evil 4 Remake may have new boss fights, reworked maps, and a shiny new look, but one thing that remains the same as all previous versions is the terrifyingly scarce ammo. There are many ways to save ammo in RE4 remake, we document those right here, but for new players and returning veterans alike there’s a new method of ammo conservation you need to know about: The Bolt Thrower. This entirely new weapon is available from the merchant in Chapter 2 (and on sale at said merchant in Chapter 3, which you should take advantage of if you are short on money – as well as ammo). There’s a video about how the Bolt Thrower works and exactly where to get it at the top of the page, so check that out.
The swag bag, Xûr, is now live in Destiny 2 for the weekend until next week's reset. If you're looking to get your some shiny new Exotic armor or weapons for your Guardian, look no further.
Each week, Xûr has a random assortment of Exotic armor, one for each Guardian class, as well as a random Exotic Weapon and an Exotic Engram available for purchase. In addition to his Exotic wares, he's got a random collection of Legendary weapons and armor to deck out your Guardians.
We've rounded up all the info on Xûr for the week including where to find Xûr, which Exotic weapons and armor are available, as well as which Legendary weapons you should pick up, either for PvE or PvP.
Xûr's location today can be found at Watcher's Grave on Nessus on March 24 through March 28. To reach him, travel to the landing point at Watcher's Grave. When you arrive, make for the red moss-covered tree straight ahead. Climb up the roots and you'll find Xûr waiting at the top to sell you exotic items and legendary weapons.
When it comes to debating the Greatest of All Time, no one’s more spirited than sports fans. And when it comes to naming the G.O.A.T. of sports video games you won’t find a more passionate, opinionated audience than sports gamers.
That’s why IGN partnered with the U.S. Army for the Best Sports Video Games Showdown that kicks off with an epic bracket featuring 32 sports video games divided into four ultra-competitive brackets.
Between March 24th and March 28th, we’ll invite IGN fans to select their guesses for each phase of the bracket with the hopes of correctly selecting the greatest sports video game.
The best part? You can walk away as the grand prize winner if you manage to correctly predict how the fan-voted bracket unfolds. Be All You Can Be and put your prediction skills to the test.
To make sure you don’t miss the opportunity to win big – keep reading for details on how to enter. And if you want to know why we chose the games featured in this bracket, tune into ign.com and youtube.com/ign to watch our bracket livestream on March 27th at 10:00am PT.
The Last Ronin comic is being adapted into an action-focused single-player video game that will play similarly to God of War. The popular and gritty 2020 comic, a spin-off of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, stars the last remaining turtle in a war-ravaged wasteland.
Some breakups are so stinging—worse than biting into a lemon slice with a cut lip—that they ruin everything the relationship ever touched, including good memories, sunny places, and your favorite video games.
Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy author who nets tens of millions of dollars in book sales every year, which puts him in the same book-selling league as George R.R. Martin. However, his financial success has not really translated into a similar mainstream visibility outside of his specific fanbase—until this week. The…
Mega Man NT Warrior anime is now available to watch for free on the Capcom USA YouTube channel. The videos will be available until September 30, 2023. The company uploaded the first two seasons, making this the first time that all these episodes will be available digitally in English. [Thanks, Lukar on Resetera!]
Each season has its own playlist consisting of 52 and 46 videos, respectively. Check out the first episode of Mega Man NT Warrior anime below:
https://youtu.be/jHXdlMTWxA4
The first chapter of the second season, Axess, is in its original Japanese version with English subtitles. Some viewers commented that certain episodes do not have their corresponding names, which could be due to the English localization of Axess skipping five episodes during its original broadcast.
Capcom announced that it would make these two seasons of the anime available after completing a marathon of the series on Twitch that started last March 21, 2023. This is all part of a campaign in preparation for the release of the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection.
Soon, more of Tsuburaya Productions and Production I.G.'s Ultraman anime will appear. Back in April 2022, Netflix noted season 3 of Ultraman will be its final one and it would release in 2023. Now there's an official release date. It will begin streaming on the service on May 11, 2023. There's also a new key visual showing off Ultraman.
Here's the official Netflix announcement, which includes the latest key art for the final season 3 of Ultraman.
The conclusion to the Ultraman series draws to a close with the long awaited ULTRAMAN FINAL. Catch it on Netflix May 11! pic.twitter.com/lESAnpGyrM
— Netflix Anime (@NetflixAnime) March 24, 2023
To help catch up, Netflix also shared an official teaser back in February. It offers hints at what Shinjiro Hayata, this series’ Ultraman, dealt with in the past and will face in the future. It poses a number of existential questions as Shinjiro considers who he is and what he's doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxuRwJBCnpo&ab_channel=NetflixAnime
It feels like the stakes are always higher with the third entry in an Atelier series. How are the characterizations? Are the mechanics getting better and not worse? Do the plot threads come together and provide sufficient answers? A bad finale can ruin the whole experience and tarnish memories of the previous installments. Fortunately, Atelier Ryza 3 exceeds expectations and is a fitting send-off for characters we’ve spent years supporting.
Ryza’s spent years figuring out what to do with her life and achieving her alchemy goals, and Atelier Ryza 3 begins with us seeing how that’s worked out for her. She’s a pillar of the Kurken Island community, relied upon for her skill and insight. Her childhood friends Bos and Tao both seem impressed with her. It’s a good thing she has come so far, because strange things are happening. A cluster of islands now known as the Kark Isles appeared out of nowhere, Ryza heard a mysterious voice and felt weird while investigating them. Earthquakes also hit again, despite her stabilizing her hometown in the original Atelier Ryza with friends. Seeing where this is all leading, she summons back her friends Klaudia and Lent, and joins with them and other allies like Patty, Kala, Dian, Federica, Empel, and Lila to understand what’s going on.
The PAX East 2023 Final Fantasy XIV panel with Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida brought up the graphics update set to arrive in 7.0. One of the fan questions asked what “future project” he’s most excited about. He cited the work on the graphics and explained how the team recently did a midway review of it.
Here’s Yoshida’s full quote from PAX East 2023 about the FFXIV graphics update:
I think I would like to mention our artists and engineers are really working hard to get this to happen with our first graphics update. That’s something we’re really looking forward to and excited about.
And of course we are working hard on it, so before I left for PAX, we were doing this midway review right before Fan Fest. With the graphics update, we want to deliver better looking graphics of course. But there are elements we’re working on that is part of the update that’s not just the immediate aesthetical aspects of it. We’re really excited about what we can deliver for this.
This could mean we may see more examples of what the update accomplishes at the Fan Festival. That will be held July 28-29, 2023 in Las Vegas.
As a reminder, Square Enix brought up the FFXIV graphics update for 7.0 in February 2022. It will involve things like higher resolution textures and improved shaders. It will also be the "first" one.
Spike Chunsoft announced the pre-order bonus for Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. It will come with a new digital novel about Yakou, who is the head of the Nocturnal Detective Agency. Kazutaka Kodaka, who wrote Rain Code, is not the author, but he supervised the novel's creation.
The title of the novel is How to Be a Master Detective: A Yakou Furio Case. Yoichiro Koizumi was the one who authored the book. Like other members of people who worked on Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, Koizumi previously helped to make the Danganronpa series. To be more specific, he was in charge of the script for the Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak High School: Despair Arc anime episodes seven and nine.
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is a franchise that is completely separate from the Danganronpa series. However, a large majority of its core staff worked on Danganronpa. It features the same character designer and composer, not to mention Kodaka being the main writer for both.
If you played Wordle religiously through 2022, you might remember one particularly rough day's answer: Parer.
This turned out to be the most difficult word of the year, in part thanks to its use of a recurring 'r', but a GDC talk yesterday from Zoe Bell, the New York Times' executive producer of games, revealed it broke a particularly whopping amount of streaks.
Typically, Bell explained, showing a chart that tracked players' streak breaks over time, "15 percent of people break their streak on a given day - except that one day, with 'parer', where almost 60 percent of people broke their streak."
One of Sea of Star’s most compelling selling points is the involvement of Chrono Trigger composer Yasunori Mitsuda. To know that a game heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger will feature music from the man behind its score is exciting. Still, it is worth being excited for the soundtrack that Mitsuda will not be directly involved with, as well.
The majority of Sea of Stars’ soundtrack is in the hands of the talented Eric W. Brown, who also composed the soundtrack for The Messenger. Brown’s musical history started with playing drums in metal bands. “I've been a drummer since I was a kid and I'm still a drummer now, but, you know, I got into music production via chiptune essentially,” Brown says. Around 2006 he decided to focus on making music on his own in the chiptune genre, primarily on Game Boys. When the opportunity to work on The Messenger came along, he graduated to making NES, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis-flavored music.
Brown enjoys working within the confines of the 16-bit era, and even takes advantage of an online database various musicians have coordinated over the years to figure out exactly what sorts of samples and tools video game composers used back in the day. Composers like Brown use it to track down specific sound modules and even specific keyboards used to make the music of the past. With that said, though, Brown is not placing many self-imposed restrictions on himself for Sea of Stars’ soundtrack.
This week on All Things Nintendo, Brian is joined by Sarah Natochenny, who has voiced Ash Ketchum in the Pokémon anime for the last 17 years. With the final episode of Ash's two-and-a-half decade run as the series' protagonist airing in Japan today, Brian and Sarah look back at her early days voicing the character and talk about her emotions leading up to the end of this era in both her career and the Pokémon animated series.
If you'd like to follow Brian on social media, you can do so on his Instagram: @BrianPShea. You can follow Sarah on Twitter: @SarahNatochenny. You can also find her official webpage here.
The All Things Nintendo podcast is a weekly show where we can celebrate, discuss, and break down all the latest games, news, and announcements from the industry's most recognizable name. Each week, Brian is joined by different guests to talk about what's happening in the world of Nintendo. Along the way, they'll share personal stories, uncover hidden gems in the eShop, and even look back on the classics we all grew up with. A new episode hits every Friday!
Fans of Magic: The Gathering, the Pokémon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh, Flesh and Blood, and other trading card games are likely familiar with eBay-owned TCGplayer, one of the largest card buying and selling platforms in the U.S.
What they may be less familiar with are the recent unionization efforts of employees at its Syracuse authentication center, and the several complaints the union has raised accusing TCGplayer of increasing surveillance of organizing workers, holding anti-union meetings, and more.
TCGunion officially voted to unionize on March 10, but after an employee involved in the union organizing was fired just a few days later, further concerns were raised. "We do not believe that the termination of an organizer this close to our election is a coincidence," TCGunion said on Twitter (below).
We do not believe that the termination of an organizer this close to our election is a coincidence, and we will not stand for the denial of our Weingarten rights. @TCGplayer and @eBay, stop with the intimidation tactics and accept that your workers have spoken. #TCGUstrong
— TCGunion-CWA (@TCGunionCWA) March 15, 2023
TCGplayer itself has made clear it isn't happy that employees of its authentication center voted to unionize, with 136 voting yes and 87 voting no.