Odds and Ends

Nintendo’s 35th Anniversary Mario Pin Set Spawns Another Pre-Order Hell

Have you heard? It’s the 35-year anniversary of Super Mario Bros. Nintendo commemorated the occasion with, among other things, a special limited-edition Mario pin set. A lot of people wanted it. Unfortunately a lot of them also didn’t get it. The pin set was announced back at the beginning of September, but didn’t finally go…

Mortal Kombat 11 Datamine Uncovers New Voices From 1995 Movie Actors

It’s hard to hide anything in your game when thousands of players can search through it with a fine-toothed comb. The folks at NetherRealm Studios found this out recently when one fan uncovered a variety of unused Mortal Kombat 11 audio files that sound as if they were recorded by the stars of the 1995…

Turn Your Xbox Controller Into A Flight Stick

Hey, Flight Simulator is out, and Squadrons is on the way. What better time to be playing games that require expensive dedicated peripherals! Only the economy sucks and you’ll never use those flight sticks for anything else, so maybe try this cool mod that’ll do kinda the same thing, only for your Xbox controller. Designed…

Adidas Is Making Cyberpunk 2077 Sneakers

Normally sneaker collabs like to pay homage to things that have already established themselves as cultural forces, but when it comes to directly helping advertise an upcoming blockbuster video game, Adidas figures it can bring that timeline forward a little. While yet to be officially unveiled by Adidas, collector solebyjc—who often gets sample pairs early…

If I Had To See The Inside Of A Fall Guy, You Do Too

This, officially, is what the inside of a Fall Guy looks like. Bird bones and nightmare eyes. I wish I’d never seen it. But now that I have, you must as well. Have a good night.

Destiny 2 Honors Deceased Developer With Moving Piece Of In-Game Lore

When players log onto Destiny 2 this week they’ll be asked to go investigate some lost Golden Age tech on Mars as part of a special tribute to Matt Helsom, an artist at Vicarious Visions who passed away last year. Touching down on Mars there’s no objective marker for where to begin the Signal Intercepted…

Black Athena: How Hades Gets Its Gods Right

I love Hades. It’s a great roguelike, has a cleverly-crafted story, and is stuffed with beautiful art and design. But what I like most about it is its commitment to diversity among its characters. Hades’ pantheon of Greek gods is diverse. Athena is a dark-skinned Black woman. Dionysus is south Asian. Hermes is east Asian.…

Random Generator Spits Out Hilarious Guilty Gear-Style Round Openings

Fighting games, especially those made by Japanese developer Arc System Works, are known for having some pretty wild start-of-round messages. Someone named ArcaneMonkey took all those lines—as well as some choice memes and other non-sequiturs—and inserted them into an online generator, which randomly spits out some really funny stuff. Here are a few of my…

NFL Dudes Play Fall Guys On Giant Stadium Screen

I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often.

Final Fantasy XVI’s Trailer Looks Like A Mix Of IX And XII (And That’s Great!)

  One of the biggest surprises of the Sony PS5 event on Wednesday was the reveal of a new main-line Final Fantasy game, the 16th in the series (more like the 36th if you count all the sequels and spinoffs and Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus). Fans of the series are excited, and some…

Hideo Kojima, Please Work With Junji Ito

Horror mangaka Junji Ito is apparently down to work with video game auteur Hideo Kojima if the opportunity presents itself. Those sounds you’re hearing are me furiously typing my demands that Kojima call Ito as soon as possible. During a recent Polygon interview, Ito was asked about his involvement with Silent Hills, the late Konami-era…

Super Mario Galaxy’s Opening Is Still Terrifying

Super Mario 3D All-Stars, launching tomorrow for the Nintendo Switch, gave me the opportunity to revisit a trio of classic video games. It also brought me face to face with what is perhaps the most terrifying opening of any Mario game, wherein Bowser literally carpet bombs the Mushroom Kingdom. As with most games in the…

God Damn The PS5 Is Enormous

Earlier this monthit dawned on us just how big the Xbox Series X is. It’s big! Know what else is big? And in most cases even bigger? The PlayStation 5. While we’ve known the PS5 was going to be large based on stuff like renders and estimates based on the size of the disc drive,…

Super Mario 64 Runs On A PS2, Universe Does Not Implode

Last year the source code for Super Mario 64 was reverse-engineered by fans. If you were wondering, “What good is that?”, well it means you can do all sorts of things with the game. Like get it running on a PS2. Yeah, you read that right. This is Nintendo’s all-time classic Super Mario 64, running…

Crusader Kings III vs Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Is Exactly The Kind Of Mod We Need

The modding scene for Crusader Kings III is still very much in its early days—we’re a while off from seeing Westeros, for example— but fans are still coming up with cool little tweaks and additions. The best one I’ve seen so far is Tony Hawk’s Pro Crusaders 1+2, which adds skating as a lifestyle trait.…

Avengers Players Are Frustrated By Its Terrible AI Teammates

Marvel’s Avengers includes the option to play online, or you can play solo with computer-controlled teammates. Playing with AI means you don’t have to deal with the game’s lousy matchmaking, but it does mean you have to deal with the game’s terrible AI, who appear in every mission where you don’t have a full roster…

This weekend, official Fist of the North Star single malt Scotch whisky was released in Japan. Bottles of Kenshiro-branded 20-year-old Teaninich-distilled single malt are 20,900 yen ($197), while Raoh-branded Glentauchers-distilled single malt are 24,200 yen ($228). Both are already sold out. 

It Would Cost $538,000 To Buy Everything On Steam

I can’t believe I’ve never seen or wondered about this before, but it turns out you can scrape data from Steam and find out how much the entire service’s catalogue would cost to purchase. And it’s…a lot less than you’d probably think? Chenggang Wang has a lil’ site called Buy All Steam Games, and it…

Uncharted 4 Contains Hidden Ghost Guns

The Uncharted games are action-packed adventures, filled with loveable characters and big setpieces. Also, apparently, ghost guns. Usually, the easiest way to do something is to just do it. For example, if you need an area in your game to have gunshots going off in the background you could just stick some guns in the…

Xbox Series S Was Actually Revealed Back In June

Earlier this week, the folks over at Microsoft announced a lightweight alternative to the beefy Xbox Series X known as the Xbox Series S. But what if I told you that the official reveal wasn’t the first time the world caught a glimpse of the cute little console? In a cheeky bit of preemptive marketing…