March 2023

There were two Spy x Family anime announcements at AnimeJapan 2023. One involves more of the show. The other had to do with the animated movie inspired by the manga. In October 2023, season 2 of Spy x Family will appear ahead of the Spy x Family Code: White movie on December 22, 2023. There’s also a new teaser image for the film.

Here’s a video showing off the key visual for the Spy x Family Code: White movie. It was drawn by Wit Studio’s Kyoji Asano, who is acting as the chief animation director for the film.

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『劇場版 SPY×FAMILY CODE: White』

総作画監督： #浅野恭司 描き下ろし
超ティザービジュアル映像公開

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『劇場版 SPY×FAMILY』は
12月22日(金)公開です

劇場版ならではの
スケール感をお楽しみに#SPY_FAMILY#スパイファミリー#劇場版SPY_FAMILY pic.twitter.com/Rccyh9aGe5

— 『SPY×FAMILY（スパイファミリー）』アニメ公式 (@spyfamily_anime) March 26, 2023

Now that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is getting close to being just over a month away, Nintendo announced a new way to see its gameplay. It announced a brief showcase on March 28, 2023. At 7am PT/10am ET/4pm CET, people will be able to watch some of the game on YouTube. Producer Eiji Aonuma will appear as the host.

Here's the tweet making the official announcement. Note that this isn't a Nintendo Direct, but rather just a chance to see new gameplay footage.

Join The Legend of #Zelda series producer, Eiji Aonuma, for roughly 10 minutes of gameplay from The Legend of Zelda: #TearsOfTheKingdom on 3/28 at 7:00 a.m. PT on our YouTube channel.

https://t.co/uMUCfVjFQL pic.twitter.com/y49N4jRUTz

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 27, 2023

Sega announced a crossover will appear in the new Samba de Amigo game. When people get Samba de Amigo: Party Central, they’ll also be able to play two songs from Sonic the Hedgehog games. One is Sonic Adventure 2’s “Escape from the City,” while the other is Sonic Forces’ Fist Bump. Sonic will also make a cameo in one stage.

Sega noted that both the songs and and stage will be included in the base game. This means people won’t need to grab them later as post-launch DLC. The stage will be inspired by Sonic Adventure 2, and the screenshot shows Amigo playing maracas alongside Sonic.

This isn’t the first time Sonic appeared in a Samba de Amigo game. As a reminder, in a past one Sonic would appear alongside Amigo on a Green Hill Zone-inspired stage.

For a reminder of how the Sonic the Hedgehog songs sounds, the official Sonic YouTube account uploaded variants of boths songs in the past. First, here’s the Sonic Forces theme “Fist Bump.” It is exactly as it appears in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI97jY3FZ9Q&ab_channel=SonictheHedgehog

While Sega’s official account didn’t upload the original “Escape from the City” from Sonic Adventure 2, there is a Funk RMX version performed by Persona 5 singer Lyn Inaizumi. It was part of the Sonic Sessions series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-SSsThzjAI&t=16s&ab_channel=SonictheHedgehog

Raeburn is joined by 30 former colleagues including “key founding members” of Playground Games and other industry-leading talent, again alluding to the creation of something new in the racing game genre.

“I’m delighted that 30 former colleagues and other industry heavyweights have chosen to join me at Lighthouse,” Raeburn said.

“With Horizon, Playground and I created one of the most successful Xbox franchises of all time. We delivered significant commercial success year after year, to massive critical acclaim, following the success from my time at Codemasters leading Dirt, Grid and F1.

Hey, listen! Nintendo has announced that tomorrow at 7 a.m. PT/10 a.m. ET, they'll be releasing the first proper gameplay showcase of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The presentation will be hosted by Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma, and will last "roughly 10 minutes." Here's the announcement tweet:

Join The Legend of #Zelda series producer, Eiji Aonuma, for roughly 10 minutes of gameplay from The Legend of Zelda: #TearsOfTheKingdom on 3/28 at 7:00 a.m. PT on our YouTube channel.

▶️ https://t.co/uMUCfVjFQL pic.twitter.com/y49N4jRUTz

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 27, 2023

To watch the video when it premieres tomorrow on YouTube, just click the Link below:

Last week, the cosmetics retailer Lush unveiled their collab lineup of Super Mario Bros. bath items. Finally, gamers will have a reason to take a bath. A bath bomb is a compact ball of essential oils and other ingredients that are used for skincare. Lush’s founder invented them nearly thirty years ago and the company…

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is just two months away, and there’s still a ton we don’t know about the widely anticipated sequel to Breath of the Wild. Like, for instance, how different will it actually be from the hit 2017 open-world game? Thankfully, Nintendo just announced a new gameplay deep dive that…

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Leon S. Kennedy may have brushed up on his Spanish, but that won’t help him when it comes to ducking and weaving through disgruntled villagers, chickens, and cows. Luckily enough, should you have John Wick-esque aim, you can avoid Resident Evil 4’s opening village fight.

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Less than a year into gaming content creator mega-brand FaZe Clan’s disastrous Wall Street experiment, the Nasdaq has said please, no more. The New York-based stock exchange sent a “Notice of Delisting” last week to the esports company threatening to drop it from trading if it doesn’t get its stock price above $1 in…

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Terra Nil is a city-builder that’s not really a city-builder. It plays like one, so it’s easy to use that label as shorthand (developers Free Lives call it a “reverse city-builder”), but Terra Nil doesn’t ask you to lay any roads or worry about residential taxes. It’s more of a “resource management puzzle game”…

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Janey, Sabz, Avuhlie, and GuhRL are probably younger than you, but they’re definitely better at Apex Legends than you. The four young women, who range in age from 17 to 27, are esports organization TSM’s first all-women pro Apex squad—quite a feat when you consider the game’s notoriously high skill ceiling. Announced…

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We’ve known about Shadows Of Doubt for a few years now, mainly peeking at it through Screenshot Saturday posts, which makes sense considering the game’s beautiful, neon-soaked voxel art. Happily, the open world detective sim is now sneaking into an early access release next month, on April 24th.

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Terra Nil is a puzzle-citybuilder about reclaiming the environment. You replace pollution with lush life across a series of four randomly generated dioramas (plus four slightly more complicated challenge levels), covering the landscape in fynbos and forests, lichen and lagoons. When it all comes together and you can look over the fruits of your labour, birds chirping and piano melodically playing in the background, it’s beautiful. Getting to that point, though, is an often repetitive experience marred with frustration.

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Slay The Spire has remained an incredibly popular deckbuilding roguelike, so it naturally invited a healthy modding community that added fun stuff to the game - goofy googley eyes included. One of Slay The Spire’s most popular mods was called Downfall, a huge fan-made expansion that added tons of playable characters, a new mode, and more. Those developers - Table 9 Studio - are now back with their own not-modded game: an auto-battling, fantasy Chess roguelike called Tales & Tactics.

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The first level of Terra Nil feels like perfection. What you give to the land and what you take from it renew each other, and so tasked with restoring a barren quarry to a thriving ecosystem, you start small. Far from the city builder convention of widely mapping out your infrastructure, you attend to small patches of land - one wind turbine and a handful of toxin scrubbers to clean the earth at a time, paid for by the irrigators you place to restore the grass on top of it.

With a foundation set, the next task is to restore local biomes, of wetland, forest and fynbos. There's something tactile and immediately satisfying about converting one of your irrigators into a hydroponium and seeing it ripple out into wetlands, or placing a beehive and hearing the brush of flower and scrubland pop up.

At the same time, it's made clear that you aren't freely zoning the land like an architect, or even a gardener. There's a moment when I start a controlled burn when I expect it to only take the flowers I targeted - only for the fire to rip through to the natural boundaries of cliffsides and water edges. And while I'm able to put down the machinery that raises the humidity to bring back rainstorms (and salmon, and mosses), the rain by itself does a better job of cleaning up than I did.

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Microsoft has stopped its £1 trial offer for Xbox Game Pass.

The trial has been around for some time and provided players with a month of Xbox Game Pass access, but Microsoft is now considering new promotions instead.

"We have stopped our previous introductory offer for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass and are evaluating different marketing promotions for new members in the future," a Microsoft spokesperson told Eurogamer.

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The latest DF Direct Weekly has arrived, with the Digital Foundry team discussing the big news from GDC - and not much is going to top Epic's various announcements in its latest State of Unreal. Kicking off with a beautiful UE5.2 tech demo showcasing the latest features of the engine, Epic delivered a range of impressive announcements, from sophisticated facial motion capture delivered via nothing more than a smartphone to a creator-led revolution for Fortnite. In the Direct we also spend some time talking about Nvidia's latest announcements via its own GTC event - with a path-traced version of Cyberpunk 2077 just weeks away from release.

Looking at Epic's starter - a demo showing the Rivian R1T electric truck travelling through a rich jungle - what we were essentially seeing was a major upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 that seemingly addresses comprehensively our main concerns about the engine. Put simply, while its prior tech demos did a fantastic job in showcasing the generational leap in fidelity delivered via its Nanite micro-geometry system, there were always concerns about how limited the nature of that geometry could be. Good for city blocks and imposing mountain terrain - yes - but what about more naturalistic environments and especially foliage?

A The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Nintendo Direct will take place tomorrow, 28th March, at 3pm UK time.

The presentation will be hosted by series producer Eiji Aonuma and will include roughly ten minutes of gameplay.

The stream will be available to watch on Nintendo's YouTube channel.

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Nintendo of Europe shared a pair of videos on Twitter featuring two songs from Splatoon 3. The first of these is "City of Color," which features the Squid Sisters Callie and Marie on vocals. This song, which originated in the first Splatoon,, is played in the background of the first half of Splatfests in Splatoon 3. The second song is "Tomorrow's Nostalgia Today," which is new to Splatoon 3. This song is played during the second half of Splatfests.

These tweets also featured two videos of the Squid Sisters performing these songs. You can see the video for "City of Color" below.

https://twitter.com/NintendoEurope/status/1640307682383896577

The video for "Tomorrow's Nostalgia Today" can be found here. Nintendo noted that Callie wrote the song to celebrate Inkopolis' "Past, Present, and Future."

https://twitter.com/i/status/1640307685659746305

Splatoon 3 returned to the city of Inkopolis, the setting of the first game in the series, in the first part of its DLC Pass. That launched on February 28, 2023. This DLC added Inkopolis as a hub for players to explore and buy items. The second DLC pack, Side Order, is a new single-player experience that will arrive sometime soon.

Splatoon 3 and its first DLC pack are out now for the Nintendo Switch.

Square Enix announced players who don’t own the FFXIV Stormblood expansion can claim it for free. There is currently a free expansion offer for the MMORPG. Until May 8, 2023, people who didn’t get it, perhaps because they own the Starter Edition of the game, can claim a copy. This promotion offers permanent access to the expansion once someone acquires it, so they can keep playing through that storyline and using its additions after the offer expires.

As a reminder, Stormblood is the game’s second expansion. It debuted back in 2017. It is notable for adding the Red Mage and Samurai jobs and the ability to visit new areas like Kugane. People can also move to Shirogane or take part in Interdimensional Rift─Omega.

Here's the trailer for FFXIV Stormblood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acf6lPBNXOU&ab_channel=FINALFANTASYXIV

The Stormblood offers ends on the same day as another Square Enix promotion. The company also announced a Free Login Campaign for the MMORPG. That runs until May 8, 2023 and allows inactive players to join the game again for up to four consecutive days.

Final Fantasy XIV and the Stormblood expansion are available for the PS4, PS5, and PC. People can claim it for free if they don't already own this expansion until May 8, 2023.

Earlier in March 2023, Shueisha announced some Naruto and Gintama music videos would appear as part of a Jump MV series. Now both are available. Each one is an original and features black-and-white art, often from the manga, interspersed with brief flashes of color. They also both use opening and ending theme songs from the anime adaptations of both series.

First, here's the Naruto music video featuring the second anime opening theme song. It focuses on Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, and Jiraya back when the story first began before the timeskip while Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s “Haruka Kanata” plays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsw-ddleSII&ab_channel=%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%97%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%8D%E3%83%AB
This is the second recent Naruto video to show up. Another official one focused on Itachi and members the Akatsuki.

MultiVersus, the free-to-play Super Smash Bros. style fighting game starring an all-star cast of Warner Bros. characters, will be pulled from storefronts next month. The game’s online modes will later become unplayable as developer Player First Games plans for a relaunch early next year. 

In a developer blog post, Player First Games CEO Tony Huynh explains that since MultiVersus launched in open beta (yes, open beta) last July, players have offered a ton of feedback. The studio feels that the only way to properly implement improvements based on these fan requests is to shut the game down temporarily. Huynh writes,

“We know there’s still a lot of work to do. As a result, we have a clearer view of what we need to focus on, specifically the content cadence of new characters, maps and modes to give you more ways to enjoy the game, along with updated netcode and more matchmaking improvements. We’ll also be reworking the progression system based on your feedback and looking at new ways for you to connect with your friends in the game.”

December 25, 2013, was the day I finally got my hands on a Wii U. It was a special edition that came with a code for Wind Waker HD and a gamepad emblazoned with a golden Triforce. For my brother and I, 11 and 13 at the time, respectively, this was a massive deal; we’d spent the last year seeing Wii Us at friends’ houses, yearning for our own, and struggling to explain the difference between it and our current Wii to our parents.

But while it was valuable to us, the Wii U struggled to sell and has ultimately gone down as one of Nintendo’s most disappointing consoles. Today, the system’s eShop shuts down forever, permanently closing a chapter of Nintendo’s history.

I’ll be the first to admit that the rosy lenses of nostalgia heavily tint my memory of the Wii U. It was a formative time in my gaming life; Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U were the centerpieces of many social gatherings. That said, I think some defense of the Wii U is still warranted. Gamer culture has been so quick to forget the worst parts of the console that the best parts have also been lost in the mix. As much as I love my Switch, there are a lot of lessons it could learn from its older, clumsier brother, especially when it comes to the eShop.

The video game-inspired fight scene in the recently released neo-noir film, John Wick: Chapter 4, may have changed the game for action movies moving forward.

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It’s Aries season, Women’s History Month, the start of spring, and Kotaku Royale week. What’s that last one, you ask? Well, we’re spending all week bringing you exclusive interviews with the teams behind your favorite battle royales, pointed opinions about the state of Warzone and the genre at large, hot takes on…

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Since its release in November 2022, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 has undergone immense scrutiny from the community due to its rocky launch. Warzone 2.0 dropped with numerous missing features that undid a lot of the goodwill garnered during the first game’s lifecycle, and while it still has a long way to go, it’s headed…

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Love makes you do crazy things. When you feel connected to another person, you feel compelled to go to the ends of the Earth for them. Maybe you’ll take a bullet for your significant other. Maybe you’ll do their taxes and handle their dirty laundry (figuratively and literally). Or maybe, as in the case of two…

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Earlier today we looked at a great price on a Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller in blue using a 20% off Ebay code, and now it's time to check out another deal using the very same discount method. This time it's a massive 18TB HDD from Seagate, an Exos enterprise-grade drive, which is available for £245 when you use the CATCH20 code at CCL's Ebay shop front.

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I like to think I have rhythm, in the same way that a wobbly air dancer lunging about sporadically has rhythm. That is to say I have none at all, and that any time spent dancing turns me into an uncontrollable set of limbs flailing in the wrong directions. Think Octodad in a night club and you’d be on the right track (although the disastrous limb flailing is enough to keep me out of the clubs).

That lack of rhythm isn’t just native to the dance floor of an awkward family party, though. Even nuzzled into my chair with a controller in hand, I simply can’t stick to the beat. My eyes glued to notes floating across the screen, trying to hit them at just the right time, you’d probably see Time hiding in a corner to my left, giggling at my repeated failure. A barrage of borked bleeps and bungled notes tend to leave me with spirits sunk.

In Hi-Fi Rush, though, I always leave with my head held high.

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A long time ago (in 2013, in fact) in a student-y house far away (assuming that you don't live too near to Nottingham), I started playing the BioShock series. I'd flirted with the idea for years, but it was the release of BioShock Infinite that finally convinced me to take the plunge. And I can't exactly complain: the series' Rapture arc — made up of the first and second games, plus the prequel novel by none other than John "The Crow" Shirley — now makes up maybe 10% of my personality, having given me two of my favourite video games, my favourite video game tie-in book, and a front-running contender for my favourite video game locale all at once.

I just wish that, after all that prep I did for it, I'd actually liked BioShock Infinite a bit more.

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It has been said (by me) that a lot of games journalists are generalists in terms of what we play, especially if we're talking about people who are staffers at an outlet, or have ever worked in guides. Though we all have stuff we prefer, or series that we serve as the go-to expert on for in-house needs (I think vid bud Liam might actually walk around wearing an ASK ME ABOUT RESIDENT EVIL badge in his day-to-day life), we - unlike the blue-haired neo-Gods of streaming - often can't focus on one game all of the time. You have to know enough about enough to be able to write about enough.

There are, however, a bunch of big important games that I haven't played. Sometimes it's because a bunch of other people have, so that gap in the site's knowledge is already plugged (and I do always make sure to be aware of their impact and basic facts). Other times, they might be games that I'm not really interested in playing, either because they're not my genre or they seem too overwrought. Or, in some cases, it's because everyone says they're really good and I have to try them, though I've been burned before on this method (you people said the same about Ready Player One). But you know what would make me take in info about these games, even if it's just by osmosis? If they all got PowerWash Sim DLCs.

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Want an Xbox controller? This official controller in Shock Blue is available for £35 brand new at CCL's Ebay store when you use the code CATCH20. That's a handy £5 cheaper than any equivalent controller on Amazon, and the best deal we've seen for these gamepads since Black Friday last year.

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There are a lot of different kinds of historical anime out there, and there’s no way to really tell which one is the best. I mean, deciding what’s right for you comes down what sorts of series you like. Because a lot of fantastic shows and movies feature historical elements, but belong to different genres. Also, you might want to consider how serious you want to get and if you prioritize accuracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6MXHczeEqc&ab_channel=CrunchyrollCollection

Most Popular Period Piece Anime at the Moment: Demon Slayer

Even though the manga ended its run, the anime adaptation is ongoing for this supernatural series set during the Taisho period. After Tanjiro’s family is killed by demons, with his sister turned into one herself as the only other survivor, he heads out to join the Demon Slayer Corps to restore her humanity. Along the way, he becomes a proficient warrior and becomes one of the few who will stand against Muzan Kibutsuji, the demon responsible for everything. Infamous studio Ufotable handles the anime adaptation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vPeTSRd580&ab_channel=CrunchyrollStoreAustralia

Best Historical Anime to Watch if You Want to Cry: Grave of the Fireflies

Grave of the Fireflies will wreck you. It follows a pair of siblings during World War II living in Kobe. I’m not going to spoil anything for you, in the event you haven’t seen it, but it shows the two’s experiences firsthand as innocents dealing with the fallout of such a massive conflict.

Nintendo released new Fire Emblem Engage videos showcasing Zelestia, a familiar yet new character in the upcoming Fell Xenologue DLC. Zelestia is the counterpart to Zephia in the alternate reality of the Fell Xenologue storyline. She is a Mage Dragon, and thus can live for thousands of years. Her starting class is Melusine, she rides a dragon into battle, and can use swords and tomes to cover most of the field.

https://twitter.com/FireEmblemJP/status/1640310107472039936

Zephia is the leader of the Four Hounds, a group devoted to the Fell Dragon Sombron, in the original story of Fire Emblem Engage. Similar to her counterpart, Zelestia is the leader of the Four Winds, a group of knights who seek to protect twin siblings Nel and Nil, two Fell Children in this alternate world of Elyos.

https://twitter.com/FireEmblemJP/status/1640247244128665600

Alear first meets Zelestia when she reunites with Nel and Nil. Since she resembles Zephia so much, Alear is shocked to meet her at first. Likewise, Zelestia is shocked to see Alear alive and well, as the Divine Dragon died long ago in this alternate Elyos. Rika Fukami reprises her role as Zelestia in the Japanese dub of Fire Emblem Engage, after having previously voiced Zephia.

Amelia Watson is the fifth and final member of Hololive English Myth to star in an episode of Holo no Graffiti (HoloGra). The entire first generation of Hololive English talents have now appeared in the show. She stars alongside Virtual Diva AZKi and Sakamata Chloe, with other members making appearances too.

This episode sees Amelia Watson hunting for an assistant in the Hololive offices. After being rejected by AZKi and Minato Aqua, she finds a willing accomplice in Sakamata Chloe. The newly re-opened Watson Detective Agency then receives a flood of menial requests from other Japanese Hololive members, including Aki Rosenthal, Shishiro Botan and Hakui Koyori. Amelia's "Smol Ame" form also makes a brief appearance. 

You can watch the full episode below, with English subtitles available via closed captions.
[embed]https://youtu.be/kLPvYMDY7FA[/embed]

HoloGra is a series of 3D animated web shorts made by Hololive productions and featuring their members in bizarre skits. Amelia Watson is not the only vtuber to join the HoloGra cast, as Gawr Gura and Calliope Mori also debuted this month. Fellow Myth members Ninomae Ina'nis and Takanashi Kiara made their first appearances back in February. You can find a full playlist of HoloGra videos, including the recent Myth-featuring episodes, here.