Monthly Archives: May 2018
Xbox Reportedly Lays Off Support Staff and Replaces with Volunteers
Microsoft has reportedly laid off paid support staff in favour of the unpaid volunteers that they trained.
Polygon reports that 12 Xbox support staff lost their jobs after unwittingly training their replacements — volunteers in the Xbox Ambassadors program.
The support staff were hired by Affirma Consulting but worked out of Microsoft's offices. According to Polygon's sources, a small team has been kept on to manage the Ambassadors.
The Xbox Ambassador program was set up in 2013, and rewards members of the community with various prizes for volunteering their time to assist with customer support.
Tom Cruise Teases Top Gun 2 With On-Set Photo
Production has finally started on the sequel to 1986's hit action flick, Top Gun, with Tom Cruise posting an on-set photo from the first day on set.
Cruise tweeted a photo of his character, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, looking at his trusty F-14A Tomcat, with the everybody's favourite line emblazoned across it, and the hashtag #Day1.
#Day1 pic.twitter.com/7jjPL277Es
— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) May 31, 2018
Woody Harrelson Says He’ll Return for Future Venom Movies
Woody Harrelson may only appear briefly in the upcoming Venom, but he is apparently set to return in a bigger role for the film's sequel.
In an interview with Collider, Harrelson was asked about his work on the upcoming superhero flick.
"I’m in a little fraction of this movie, but I’ll be in the next one, you know? So I haven’t read that script, but anyways, just rolled the dice."
As IGN previously reported, Harrelson joined Venom late last year. At the time, sources said Harrelson would be playing a "Henchman" character, but few details were available. When pressed for details about his character in Collider, Harrelson did not offer any new information.
Marvel Sneaks Superman and Wonder Woman Into One of Their Comics
Marvel's Lockjaw comic features two of DC's biggest superheroes, Superman and Wonder Woman.
Warning: Spoilers for Lockjaw #4 follow.
Per ComicBook.com, the final issue of the Lockjaw miniseries has a small cameo from the DC heroes during a climatic battle.
The series centers on Lockjaw reuniting with his long lost siblings, and it also reveals his true origins. In the latest issue, Lockjaw goes up against Annihilus, lord of the Negative Zone. Their battles take them to different realms, including Asgard, the Ultimate Universe, and Duckworld.
Marvel Subtly Clarifies How to Pronounce Venom’s ‘Symbiote’
Marvel has subtly clarified how to pronounce Venom's "symbiote" in the latest Amazing Spider-Man comic.
Warning: Spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #800 follow.
The first full trailer for Sony's Venom movie had everyone debating the pronunciation of the word. In the trailer, one of the film's stars, Jenny Slate, repeatedly pronounces "symbiote" as "sym-BYE-ote" instead of "sym-BEE-ote."
Per ComicBook.com, Amazing Spider-Man #800 has none other than J. Jonah Jameson clearing things up. After Spider-Man struggles in his battle with Red Goblin, Jameson decides to phone Eddie Brock/Venom to ask him to help Spidey.
James Marsden Cast in Sonic the Hedgehog Movie
Westworld star James Marsden has officially joined the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
Variety reports Marsden will star in Paramount's live-action/CGI hybrid adaptation of the popular video game franchise. No word yet on who Marsden will play in the film.
James Marsden as Teddy Flood in Westworld.
The History of Vault 76 and What It Means for Fallout 76
The next Fallout has been announced, and no Bethesda didn’t suddenly decide to skip a few dozen numbers. Fallout 76 seems to be following New Vegas’ lead as a spin-off from the main Fallout series, with the 76 referring to Vault 76.
The thing is, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Vault 76, and what we know about this vault actually tells us where Fallout 76 will likely be set, its place in the Fallout timeline, and also reveals a surprising connection to the very first Fallout.
Vault 76 is mentioned in a few places outside of its debut teaser trailer. It’s listed on a Vault-Tec computer terminal in The Citadel in Fallout 3, discussed by the news announcer in the intro of Fallout 4, and named during an audio log in Fallout 3’s Mothership Zeta add-on. You can see all of those examples in the video at the top of the page, and that handful of references is full of solid info.
Fallout, Pokemon, LEGO Among Today’s Five Big Game Announcements
While E3 2018 is still nearly two weeks away, but that hasn't prevented publishers and developers from introducing plenty of new titles to keep us playing all 2018 long...and likely into 2019.
In the last 24 hours, as of publication, five major games have been announced — and one of them is already available. In case you've missed any of the announcements — or all of IGN's breakdowns of what we've learned so far, read on to learn the latest about upcoming Fallout, LEGO, and Pokemon games.
And be sure to catch up on what, including some of these, games will be at E3 2018.
Bethesda Announces Fallout 76
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection Review – Keep The Past Alive
The Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is another example of Digital Eclipse going above and beyond to properly port and pay tribute to a bounty of classic Capcom games. This anthology includes 12 Street Fighter arcade ports in all, and four of the best have been updated for online play. You can also find plenty of insightful history to unpack outside of combat. From soundtracks to sprite animation breakdowns, to high-res design documents for classic and cancelled games alike, there's a wealth of high-quality reference material to round out the robust selection of games.
All told, the 30th Anniversary Collection includes the original Street Fighter, five versions of Street Fighter II, three iterations of Street Fighter III, and the Street Fighter Alpha, Alpha 2, and Alpha 3. It's great to have all of these seemingly arcade-perfect ports in one place today, and with any luck, for many generations to come. Eagle-eyed aficionados will note the absence of Alpha 2 Gold and Alpha 3 Upper, both of which were available in 2006's Street Fighter Alpha Anthology on PS2, but their omission is far from a deal-breaker.
Likewise, while it may be momentarily disappointing that your favorite console ports are missing (understandable given the lofty scope of emulating multiple consoles) what is here plays wonderfully. If you already love these games, no matter how you played them in the past, the 30th Anniversary Collection will deliver a great experience. In some cases, you may just be looking for a quick trip down memory lane, because let's be honest, the original Street Fighter isn't great by modern standards; it is nonetheless awesome to see it preserved so well and be so easily accessible.
The enduring qualities of the collection's more notable games remain as strong as ever. Capcom's prowess for making exciting and attractive 2D fighting games was almost unparalleled during the '90s, and thus a game like Street Fighter III feels only marginally retro 19 years after the fact. In a similar fashion, Street Fighter Alpha 3's roster variety and variable fighting mechanics make it a fan-favorite to this day for reasons all its own. Does every version of Street Fighter II feel worth playing? Maybe not in isolation, but the evolution of that game in particular meant a lot to the community that grew up around it, and its prominent share of the games list helps tell the complete story of an important chapter in video game history.
Street Fighter's popularity rose out of tense face-to-face arcade bouts, and every game in this collection was released before the popularization of online battles. Over the years, however, Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike would wind up on various connected platforms. Those same games makeup the selection of online-enabled games here, and they exist under a single roof (one lobby can support fight requests for all of the available games at once.) Digital Eclipse has implemented a customizable framework that allows you to dial-in settings tied to input latency, giving you a small but meaningful advantage in the battle against poor network connections.
Just as the 30th Anniversary Collection breathes new life into classic games, its supplemental material helps you appreciate them in all new ways. There's an interactive timeline that chronicles 30 years of milestone and obscure events alike, often with breakout galleries accompanying the release dates of the biggest games. Each of the collection's 48 relevant characters has a dedicated profile with an interactive sprite gallery that lets you manually scrub through their most iconic attacks from each game, frame by frame. Perhaps most valuable of all, it's awesome to have complete soundtracks for each included game. There's a notable lack of video content given what was included in the 25th Anniversary Collection, but Capcom has otherwise given Digital Eclipse a ton of great and never-before-seen content to work with.
That's more or less the story of the 30th Anniversary Collection. It won't satisfy every specific demand, but it's still a big collection of awesome games and behind-the-scenes content that no Street Fighter fan should miss. Street Fighter is a series worth celebrating and Digital Eclipse has managed to do so in a manner that feels respectful to the series and to the people who keep the spirit of arcade battles alive.
Wreck-It Ralph 2 Images Feature the Disney Princesses
New images for Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 offer a sneak peak at two new characters, alongside the Disney princesses.
Per USA Today, one of the images includes Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) meeting Belle, Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Pocahontas, Elsa, Anna, Moana, Rapunzel, and Tiana.
Wreck-It Ralph 2 Disney princesses image, via USA Today.