Monthly Archives: May 2016
Celebrate 30 Years of Mario in Wii U’s Free Minecraft Update
As senior manager of Nintendo’s third party relations, Damon Baker has lots of experience working with developers on special collaborations. Minecraft: Wii U Edition’s Mario Mash up pack, a free update coming this week, set a new milestone for him. “This is the most IP integration in a third-party game that I can remember,” Baker told IGN.
Baker isn’t kidding. A collaboration between Nintendo, Minecraft-maker Mojang, and developer 4J Studios pulled out all the stops to put Mario in this Wii U-exclusive mash-up pack. Gamers will find 40 Mario-themed skins, which they can use to dress up the game’s characters as familiar heroes and villains from the Mushroom Kingdom. All the world and item textures are redone, letting players create their own Super Mario-themed locations. Nintendo also licensed 15 pieces of music from Super Mario 64. Enemies have been re-skinned as well. The update transforms wolves into Poochy and sheep into Koopas. Despite the new look and sound, Baker assures us Minecraft’s base gameplay has not changed.
Yo-Kai Watch 2 Launching This Year in the US
Yo-Kai Watch 2 will be released exclusively for Nintendo 3DS devices on September 30 in the United States.
The game, which is developed by Level-5 and is wildly successful in Japan, brings new areas, over 100 new Yo-Kai, a new in-game Yo-Kai watch, and the ability to travel back in time.
Two versions of the game will be available—Yo-Kai Watch 2: Bony Spirits and Yo-Kai Watch 2: Fleshy Souls. Both feature rare Yo-Kai only available in each respective game.
Invisible to the human eye, Yo-Kai are mysterious creatures with unique skills and strengths. The fantasy role-playing game is focused on a young adventurer who finds a special watch that uncovers the creatures. Players explore the world with the strange watch, befriending and battling Yo-Kai along the way.
Bulletstorm Developer Making a New AAA Shooter
People Can Fly, the Polish developer behind the Painkiller series, Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgment, is working on a new AAA shooter.
Speaking to Gamepressure, People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski confirmed that the studio - which was rebranded as Epic Games Poland in 2013 but regained independence in 2015 - has been working on the new game since the beginning of 2016.
Wojciechowski also confirmed that the game already has a publisher in place, but that he can't reveal more at this stage. On top of the shooter, People Can Fly is also working on a second, smaller project.
George Lucas Museum Eyes San Francisco, L.A. Interested
Star Wars creator George Lucas is considering San Francisco as a potential home for his narrative art museum.
According to SFGate, a site for the museum has already been approved for development on Treasure Island, following a lobbying campaign by Mayor Ed Lee.
The mayor and Lucas have discussed the move and settled on a potential site on the west side. Lee plans to formally invite Lucas to consider building his museum at that location sometime this week. "I never gave up on the idea," Lee said of having the museum in San Francisco. "We have a chance to bring it back, and I want to be open and positive about it."
Game of Thrones: Quaithe’s Prophecy Might Hint Where Dany Goes Next
Spoilers for Game of Thrones and the A Song of Ice and Fire novels continue below. Read on at your own risk.
"To go north, you must journey south, to reach the west you must go east. To go forward you must go back and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."
So the mysterious Quaithe told Daenerys Targaryen back in George R.R. Martin's second novel A Song of Ice and Fire novel, A Clash of Kings, and so that quote seems to be more relevant than ever in the fourth episode of Season 6, "Book of the Stranger."
Quaithe, a veiled woman who is from the Shadow Lands, only appeared in two episodes of Game of Thrones back in Season 2. Despite her conversation with Dany in the books, she never ended up meeting the Mother of Dragons during her time in Qarth, nor did she relay her now infamous prophecy. She did, however, have two significant interactions with Jorah Mormont.
Nintendo: NX Is Not the Successor “To the Wii U nor to the 3DS”
Nintendo's president, Tatsumi Kimishima has reiterated that the Nintendo NX is an entirely new console for Nintendo, and will not follow the conventions of the company's currently released hardware.
Speaking in the same interview that revealed Nintendo is considering entering the film business, he made clear that not only does the company see it as a brand new project, but one that will outperform the Wii U:
Assassin’s Creed Movie is “65% Present Day, 35% Past”
The Assassin's Creed movie's executive producer has revealed the proportion of time spent in the film's two time periods - and they're not necessarily what people expected.
Speaking to IGN on a recent set visit, EP Pat Crowley said that the video game adaptation would be set 65% in the present day and 35% in the film's Animus-assisted 15th Century Spain.
It's something of a shift from the Assassin's Creed games themselves, which place you primarily in the past, with story bridges set in their various contemporary settings.
First Look at King Kong in New Universal Theme Park Ride
The Skull Island: Reign of Kong ride is coming to Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure theme park this summer, and IGN has your first look at new images of King Kong himself from the attraction.
The ride will take you through a 1930s expedition on Skull Island and encounters with prehistoric creatures, dinosaurs included - and then, of course, Kong.
Check out a video featuring Mike West from Universal Creative describing what it will be like to face Kong on the ride below, followed by new images of Kong in our gallery, along with a stat sheet on the legendary giant ape.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman.
The Witcher’s Wild Hunt of Blood and Wine
“Yeah, he was a funny guy to work with, Peter. He was quite interesting. I used to like the days where he'd actually take us out for lunch and then start drinking and go, ‘I can't be bothered to go back to work today.’ So he'd just put his card behind the bar and everyone would stay at the pub for a little bit. This is why we had quite a lot of delays on those games. A very different experience.”
Peter Molyneux gets better every time I hear about him, and CD Projekt RED senior animator, Jamie Bury, has a few things to say. He’s been animating video games with seniority for some 15, 16 years now. Prior to landing in Poland with The Witcher crew, he “worked on things like Black & White, and Fable. Crysis. These kind of things.”
On Valkyria Chronicles’ Magical Realism
It’s late October 2008 and the affecting fiction of Valkyria Chronicles peeked from store shelves for the PS3. It felt like it should loom. Scant fanfare preceded its Western arrival, and very little succeeded it. It didn’t succeed, at least commercially. For the war crime of being an artful anime SRPG in the time of brown military shooters, nobody bothered to market it properly outside of Japan, where it received a conferral of honours that persists to this day in the form of every method of merchandising known to pop culture. There’s even a threequel that charts the misadventures of a penal battalion, Valkyria Chronicles 3: Unrecorded Chronicles, that sounds fantastic. At least, on paper. It’s never been officially localised.