Battle Royale: The Last Generation Of An SNES-CD Saga
- Thread starter RySenkari
- Start date
Had to be done.
Texas.
Texas never changes.
*cigar chomp*
*sigh*
We all do Lyssa; but you know even if she was, she'd still be with Chris.
Oh wow....honestly didn't see that coming.
Unless RySenkari and Nivek have changed their minds and decided to continue it into the end of 2021, or even into 2022.
I'm pretty sure he meant the end of Sony and Nintendo's partnership.
Oh, my bad if that was what he meant. @Glubbfubb
From what I can gather:
- The partnership is not gone now, but yes, it will end in a few months’ time.
- There’s a good chance Sony will go Third Party, but will still make games on Nintendo consoles.
- Exception: Because Nintendo has a stake in the Pokemon IP, this part of the partnership legally MUST continue.
I think Stumptown looks to be the show ABC wouldn't die (IOTL, it was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
January 2020 - Apple Embarks On A Quest
With his big victory in last night's New Hampshire primary, front-runner Marco Rubio has edged even closer to securing the Republican nomination, though there's still a long way to go as several of his rivals plan to regroup before next month's big contests in South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, and Florida. Rubio won New Hampshire with 46.9% of the vote, well ahead of his closest rival, Nick Freitas, who only won 17.2%. Rubio's win in New Hampshire, on top of his win in Iowa, was expected, though his wide margin of victory came as a bit of a surprise to analysts, especially after the strong performances both Freitas and Rick Santorum had in Iowa. Santorum was only able to muster a fifth-place finish this time around, though he remains in third place overall, just ahead of Cindy McCain, who needed to finish in the top three last night to have any hope of continuing her campaign. Her third place finish, with 11 percent of the vote, does keep her in the race, but she'll need to have a major reversal of fortune and win at least one of South Carolina or Nevada to have a realistic chance going forward. Meanwhile, John James and Stacey Dash, who finished fourth and sixth in the state, are trending downward after last night's race, with both needing to finish in the top three and neither one able to accomplish that feat. James managed to secure eight percent of the vote, while Dash garnered a mere 4.6%. James has vowed to continue until at least the Michigan primary late next month, where he'll need to win big, while Dash, who was counting on a strong performance in New Hampshire, is likely to pull out of the race before the end of the month, and has indicated that she may endorse Rubio in a bid to wind up as a possible VP pick.
-from an article on CNN.com, posted on January 29, 2020
Iowa caucus results (top 7):
Marco Rubio: 31.4%
Rick Santorum: 21.0%
Nick Freitas: 19.7%
Cindy McCain: 6.0%
John James: 5.8%
Ken Buck: 4.0%
Stacey Dash: 3.1%
New Hampshire primary results (top 7):
Marco Rubio: 46.9%
Nick Freitas: 17.2%
Cindy McCain: 11.1%
John James: 8.0%
Rick Santorum: 7.1%
Stacey Dash: 4.6%
Matt Rosendale: 2.1%
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Magic-Themed School Show To Lead New Disney Toon Lineup
Four new animated shows will be coming to Disney Channel this year, and first among them is a show about a group of young people at a hidden magic school. No, this isn't an animated adaptation of Harry Potter. It's Ikenfell, a new show blending artwork from classic children's stories with video game inspiration, featuring a chiptune-inspired musical score by Aivi and Surasshu (the team behind the soundtrack of Cartoon Network's Steven Universe). The show centers on a young redhead named Safina and her human sister Maritte, and the friends and foes they meet along the way. The show was developed by Chevy Ray Johnson, a former programmer and writer for Pyramid Games, who aided with the development of the Terror Trip series and initially developed Ikenfell as a game pitch, but though Johnson's idea was turned down (primarily due to Pyramid's focus on development of The Boiling Isles), Hirsch encouraged him to either go indie with his game idea or pitch it to Disney or Cartoon Network. Johnson developed the idea further, and Disney accepted the pitch, ordering twenty episodes for the show's first season, which will debut in the fall. The show is expected to touch on more mature themes than typical Disney Channel fare, with the network relaxing its standards somewhat in the wake of the success of Cartoon Network's Lyte And Darke. Along with Ikenfell, Disney will also debut Monstrous, about a boy with the ability to transform into powerful legendary beasts such as Bigfoot. He inherited his gift from his father, and his family has a long legacy of monstrous transformations, the source of the world's various monster myths and legends. Monstrous is said to be an "extremely action packed" show by its creator, and will feature plenty of fights and action sequences as the hero finds himself hunted by a mysterious organization. In more lighthearted fare, Disney will also debut The Ghost and Molly McGee, starring Ashly Burch as the voice of a young girl who moves into a new home with her family, only to befriend the mysterious ghost that lives there. Though the show will no doubt draw comparisons with Blockbuster's Beetlejuice revival, The Ghost And Molly McGee is more lighthearted and episodic, and will also feature a lyrical song in every 15-minute episode. Finally, Disney Channel will debut a brand new Toy Story series, in which Woody and Buzz, in their original personas (Woody as a cowboy and Buzz as a space ranger) are brought together via a space-time anomaly and forced to work together to save both of their worlds. Jessie, Mr. Potato Head, Rex, Hamm, and numerous other toys from the series will also make appearances, with Jessie at the very least expected to be a regular as Woody's fellow Western-styled hero. Ikenfell and Monstrous will debut together in the fall, while The Ghost And Molly McGee is expected to debut in June, and Toy Story: Adventures Through Space And Time will debut in March, after the series finale of Goldilocks: The Series.
-from an article on Tubehound, posted on January 13, 2020
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Game Spotlight: Bloodlust
Bloodlust is a looter-shooter FPS exclusive to the Apple Virtua. Heavily inspired by games such as Doom, with even Arbiter of Sin being an influence (on the graphical style and gameplay, definitely not thematically), Bloodlust is a game in which you play as a mercenary who must single-handedly save the world after an evil scientist creates an army of replicants to take over everything. How do you save the world in this game? Simple: by shooting the living daylights out of everything you see. Bloodlust pulls absolutely no punches with what kind of game it is, it's an FPS in which the protagonist shoots enemies without mercy as gore and loot go flying everywhere, with a wide variety of different weapons that have a lot of different effects. Loot consists of new guns, upgrades to said guns, and modifications to guns that can cause them to have strange new effects. There's no armor or class mods in this game, everything that drops is either a weapon or something to make your weapon stronger, and if you don't need it, you can quickly either sell it to a vendor or break it down for components to mod or craft your own weapons. There's really very little to get in the way of your looting and shooting, stages are fairly linear and there's no sidequests, though there are some bonus missions that can be undertaken. There's no leveling up either, the only thing you have to worry about is powering up your guns and picking up the occasional health boost or body armor. Combat itself, however, is somewhat complex, with multiple enemy parts to shoot, the ability to switch between up to six weapons at once, and a variety of melee maneuvers and counters that can help you defeat foes or just blast through them more quickly. Each level has at least one boss, with minibosses and "elite" enemies galore, and there's a surprising variety of enemy types in this game, with different strategies required for each one. Some enemies will have shields you'll need to take down, some enemies use armor, others are fast, others are big and powerful... you can just mindlessly shoot everything at random, and with good enough guns that's a viable strategy, but most people will need to pay attention to the enemies, dodge or take cover from their attacks, and aim for weakpoints. In addition to Bloodlust's campaign mode, the game also features competitive and cooperative multiplayer, with competitive multiplayer allowing players to enter an area with up to 63 other players for team combat, free-for-all deathmatch, or even battle royales, using specific weapon loadouts or, in anything goes mode, bringing your own weapons from the single player game. The cooperative multiplayer mode allows four players to team up together, either playing the main campaign or the side missions or taking on special team-only modes with extra tough enemies. The game utilizes the Virtua's motion controls heavily, allowing players to aim with their hands or to use motion controls for melee, and of course, the Oculus VR is also supported for immersive ripping and tearing. The game's graphics, though quite well animated and detailed, are also a bit cartoonish, not hyper realistic but somewhat exaggerated and stylized for comedic effect. The game's voice cast is led by Chris Rager, who voices the mercenary protagonist who goes by the name of Hank Blood (and yes, Rager uses a voice very similar to the one he uses for Mr. Torgue in the OTL Borderlands games). Bloodlust features a very simple plot which takes a back seat to the gameplay so that players don't have to think too much about things while they're blowing enemies away. The story is that a mad scientist, Dr. Dmitri Helgeist, has discovered a way to clone living beings as easily as flicking a switch. He uses this to create an army of supersoldiers, millions in all, and send them marching across the planet, taking over every country they possibly can. The army can't stop them (they're resistant to nuclear weapons thanks to the doctor's modifications), so they're forced to hire mercenaries, and Hank Blood signs up for the job, arming himself with every weapon he can get his hands on and battling Helgeist's armies all over the globe. As the game progresses, Helgeist's DNA splicing abilities progress, enabling him to create more powerful clones and giant mutant creatures, making it more and more difficult for Blood as he continues to shoot his way through the replicant armies. Eventually, Blood confronts Helgeist himself, who does the cliche thing and uses DNA splicing to mutate himself into a giant hideous beast, the last creature Blood has to take down. Of course, the game ends with a sequel hook, as Helgeist leaked his tech on the internet when he died, allowing everyone, even obnoxious bratty kids, to create their own clone armies, and we quickly learn that Blood's work isn't done.
Released on January 10, 2020, exclusively for the Apple Virtua, Bloodlust is an edgy, gritty, insane FPS ride... and many players absolutely love it, due to the complexity of the combat and just how fun it is to go around shooting and looting things. Blood's combat dialogue is hilarious, and players also love that the game never takes itself too seriously, in contrast with a lot of the more deep and serious games of the time. Bloodlust would see loads of DLC in the next couple years following its release, and while some of it (mainly entire story campaigns) would be paid, much of it would be free, including dozens of new missions and some free weapons and weapon skins, adding lots of value to the game after its release. Reviews would mostly average in the mid to high 8s, as reviewers would criticize the game's non-linear levels and lack of exploration, but heap praise on everything else, including its irreverent storyline and dialogue (the game manages to be edgy without ever really becoming offensive for the sake of being offensive, avoiding a crucial mistake that the Arbiter of Sin series made, and also allowing the game to be played a wide variety of people). Sales are quite good, especially for a game so late in the Virtua's lifecycle, and Apple is able to continue their strong 2019 by notching 2020's first major hit.
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Other Significant Titles for January 2020:
Cloudpunk: OTL's indie cyberpunk delivery game is a TTL Stadia exclusive, coming out slightly earlier in 2020 than it did IOTL. Like OTL, the game has the player piloting a flying car around a futuristic cyberpunk city, making deliveries to various people, while occasionally learning about their stories and making dialogue choices to affect certain quests. Unlike IOTL, the game is a bit more hyped, positioned as a moderately significant Stadia indie, and the game is also somewhat bigger and more expanded from OTL's game, leading to better reviews (averaging in the 8/10 range). Positioned mostly against Bloodlust as a lighter, more plot heavy alternative game (and a cheaper one, at $29.99), it becomes a decent success, continuing the Stadia's success with funding indie studios to develop exclusive games (something Google has utilized extensively ITTL, to great effect).
Contra: Annihilator: Ubisoft brings the Contra series to full 3-D in this shoot 'em up action-RPG title set in a world at war between united armies of freedom and an evil conquering warlord. The game features all the fast paced shooting and difficulty of the classic Contra series, but in full 3-D with modern graphics, and can best be described as a Souls-like shooter. Loot and money drop from killed enemies, but if you're killed before you can spend your money, you're out of luck, while you also drop most of the items you have on hand when you die. This game is absolutely punishing, but also quite a thrill for longtime series fans. It's released on the Reality, Virtua, Stadia, and even the Nexus, and achieves solid reviews, though sales are a bit disappointing, proving that the series doesn't quite hold the sway it once did over players.
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"When Apple released the Virtua back in 2013, it was a bold experiment in immersive gaming. Would people really be willing to get up and move to play their games? We gave players the option to play with traditional controls, but many of them chose to dive into the Virtua's world, and many of those players even purchased our groundbreaking Oculus headset to dive even deeper into the action. 100 million units sold later, and it's clear that players love immersive gaming and are willing to pay a premium price for it. However, our competition also thrived during this time. That begged the question: how can we put ourselves ahead of the rest of the industry? How can we give players what they want in a game console, while at the same time introducing something they've never seen before? Now, seven years after the release of the Virtua, we have the answer. We have the next big thing in gaming.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Apple Quest."
-Steve Jobs, at a January 27, 2020 press event for Apple's future gaming devices
Apple Introduces Virtua Successor, the Apple Quest, At Gaming Presser
We now know that the successor to the Apple Virtua will be the Apple Quest, and that it will be released this November. The new device is a game console far more powerful than the Virtua, and which will power a new generation of Apple games while also focusing heavily on interactivity and immersion to put players into their games like never before. The Quest will feature the same motion capture technology that powered the Virtua, though its controllers will now consist of a pair of modified gloves that will allow players to control their games with never before seen precision. Before one conjures up bad memories of the Power Glove, rest assured: these gloves are far more ergonomically capable of controlling games, and when demonstrated at the presser, it was easy to see that they represent a step forward from the Virtua's motion controls, putting players in their games like never before. Of course, Apple will offer traditional controls for the Quest, much as they did for the Virtua, and few, if any games will require the full motion controls to be used. The Quest will also come with a next generation Oculus headset which doubles as an "Apple G" device, allowing players to not only stream and play their new Quest games with immersive 3D graphics, but also to play their iPhone G games on the go with full VR as well, utilizing either the Quest glove controls or a traditional controller. Jobs told the gathered reporters that the "Quest" name symbolizes his intention with this new Apple console: to allow players to embark on whatever adventures they desire without ever leaving home.
In addition to showing off the new console, several new games were demonstrated, including a brand new Ecco the Dolphin title called Ecco Evolution, in which the player will be able to control the titular dolphin in a new 3-D adventure, fully immersed under the vast ocean. We also got to see a new IP, Flare: Princess Of The Caldera, which has been announced as a spiritual successor to the Aerio series and features a teenage girl with the power to control fire. Born in the aftermath of a future Yellowstone supervolcano eruption, Flare has been tasked with saving the post-apocalyptic world from the horrors spawned by the erupting volcano, and the player will be able to wield fire in their hands as they guide Flare in her missions, befriending people and protecting them as well. We then got the centerpiece of the presentation: Pixel Quest, the third game in the Pixelworld series which will allow players to literally create worlds with their hands and then inhabit those worlds, joining millions of other players in a vast virtual landscape, Jobs says that Pixel Quest is the kind of game the Quest was designed for, and that it will be included at launch with every Quest system. We got to see some other games on the device, including the new Sonic: The Rings Of Chaos, which is coming to both the Virtua and the Quest, Duality Quest, which is coming in October to the Virtua and then will come to the Quest in December, as well as some third party titles including Watch Dogs Legion, Final Fantasy XV, and Futureshock 2, all of which run great on the new console. Jobs also teased some future titles coming in 2021 and beyond, including a new game based on Jonny Quest, reviving the IP after 22 years of dormancy, and featuring characters and adventures from both the 1960s original series and The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest, while the game itself takes place in an alternate continuity after the original series, serving as an alternate Real Adventures of sorts. We then got to see a game taking place in a gritty medieval kingdom, where we'll be playing as a deposed prince who must team up with his sister to liberate their realm from an usurper. The game does have some fantastical elements, and looked very similar to A Song Of Ice And Fire in overall tone. Finally, we were teased at a new Panzer Dragoon game, which is likely to come in 2022 or later.
We didn't get a price for the new console, though Jobs said to expect a lot more info on the Quest at E3, so it's likely we'll get a price and an exact release date there. The Quest is definitely different from any console that's come before it, and seems to take the design philosophies of the Virtua to their logical conclusion. Whether or not the Quest ends up being Apple's biggest success, the next Power Glove, or something in between will no doubt become clearer when we see what Nintendo has in store, and when the Quest releases late this year.
-from a January 27, 2020 article on Kotaku
-from an article on CNN.com, posted on January 29, 2020
Iowa caucus results (top 7):
Marco Rubio: 31.4%
Rick Santorum: 21.0%
Nick Freitas: 19.7%
Cindy McCain: 6.0%
John James: 5.8%
Ken Buck: 4.0%
Stacey Dash: 3.1%
New Hampshire primary results (top 7):
Marco Rubio: 46.9%
Nick Freitas: 17.2%
Cindy McCain: 11.1%
John James: 8.0%
Rick Santorum: 7.1%
Stacey Dash: 4.6%
Matt Rosendale: 2.1%
-
Magic-Themed School Show To Lead New Disney Toon Lineup
Four new animated shows will be coming to Disney Channel this year, and first among them is a show about a group of young people at a hidden magic school. No, this isn't an animated adaptation of Harry Potter. It's Ikenfell, a new show blending artwork from classic children's stories with video game inspiration, featuring a chiptune-inspired musical score by Aivi and Surasshu (the team behind the soundtrack of Cartoon Network's Steven Universe). The show centers on a young redhead named Safina and her human sister Maritte, and the friends and foes they meet along the way. The show was developed by Chevy Ray Johnson, a former programmer and writer for Pyramid Games, who aided with the development of the Terror Trip series and initially developed Ikenfell as a game pitch, but though Johnson's idea was turned down (primarily due to Pyramid's focus on development of The Boiling Isles), Hirsch encouraged him to either go indie with his game idea or pitch it to Disney or Cartoon Network. Johnson developed the idea further, and Disney accepted the pitch, ordering twenty episodes for the show's first season, which will debut in the fall. The show is expected to touch on more mature themes than typical Disney Channel fare, with the network relaxing its standards somewhat in the wake of the success of Cartoon Network's Lyte And Darke. Along with Ikenfell, Disney will also debut Monstrous, about a boy with the ability to transform into powerful legendary beasts such as Bigfoot. He inherited his gift from his father, and his family has a long legacy of monstrous transformations, the source of the world's various monster myths and legends. Monstrous is said to be an "extremely action packed" show by its creator, and will feature plenty of fights and action sequences as the hero finds himself hunted by a mysterious organization. In more lighthearted fare, Disney will also debut The Ghost and Molly McGee, starring Ashly Burch as the voice of a young girl who moves into a new home with her family, only to befriend the mysterious ghost that lives there. Though the show will no doubt draw comparisons with Blockbuster's Beetlejuice revival, The Ghost And Molly McGee is more lighthearted and episodic, and will also feature a lyrical song in every 15-minute episode. Finally, Disney Channel will debut a brand new Toy Story series, in which Woody and Buzz, in their original personas (Woody as a cowboy and Buzz as a space ranger) are brought together via a space-time anomaly and forced to work together to save both of their worlds. Jessie, Mr. Potato Head, Rex, Hamm, and numerous other toys from the series will also make appearances, with Jessie at the very least expected to be a regular as Woody's fellow Western-styled hero. Ikenfell and Monstrous will debut together in the fall, while The Ghost And Molly McGee is expected to debut in June, and Toy Story: Adventures Through Space And Time will debut in March, after the series finale of Goldilocks: The Series.
-from an article on Tubehound, posted on January 13, 2020
-
Game Spotlight: Bloodlust
Bloodlust is a looter-shooter FPS exclusive to the Apple Virtua. Heavily inspired by games such as Doom, with even Arbiter of Sin being an influence (on the graphical style and gameplay, definitely not thematically), Bloodlust is a game in which you play as a mercenary who must single-handedly save the world after an evil scientist creates an army of replicants to take over everything. How do you save the world in this game? Simple: by shooting the living daylights out of everything you see. Bloodlust pulls absolutely no punches with what kind of game it is, it's an FPS in which the protagonist shoots enemies without mercy as gore and loot go flying everywhere, with a wide variety of different weapons that have a lot of different effects. Loot consists of new guns, upgrades to said guns, and modifications to guns that can cause them to have strange new effects. There's no armor or class mods in this game, everything that drops is either a weapon or something to make your weapon stronger, and if you don't need it, you can quickly either sell it to a vendor or break it down for components to mod or craft your own weapons. There's really very little to get in the way of your looting and shooting, stages are fairly linear and there's no sidequests, though there are some bonus missions that can be undertaken. There's no leveling up either, the only thing you have to worry about is powering up your guns and picking up the occasional health boost or body armor. Combat itself, however, is somewhat complex, with multiple enemy parts to shoot, the ability to switch between up to six weapons at once, and a variety of melee maneuvers and counters that can help you defeat foes or just blast through them more quickly. Each level has at least one boss, with minibosses and "elite" enemies galore, and there's a surprising variety of enemy types in this game, with different strategies required for each one. Some enemies will have shields you'll need to take down, some enemies use armor, others are fast, others are big and powerful... you can just mindlessly shoot everything at random, and with good enough guns that's a viable strategy, but most people will need to pay attention to the enemies, dodge or take cover from their attacks, and aim for weakpoints. In addition to Bloodlust's campaign mode, the game also features competitive and cooperative multiplayer, with competitive multiplayer allowing players to enter an area with up to 63 other players for team combat, free-for-all deathmatch, or even battle royales, using specific weapon loadouts or, in anything goes mode, bringing your own weapons from the single player game. The cooperative multiplayer mode allows four players to team up together, either playing the main campaign or the side missions or taking on special team-only modes with extra tough enemies. The game utilizes the Virtua's motion controls heavily, allowing players to aim with their hands or to use motion controls for melee, and of course, the Oculus VR is also supported for immersive ripping and tearing. The game's graphics, though quite well animated and detailed, are also a bit cartoonish, not hyper realistic but somewhat exaggerated and stylized for comedic effect. The game's voice cast is led by Chris Rager, who voices the mercenary protagonist who goes by the name of Hank Blood (and yes, Rager uses a voice very similar to the one he uses for Mr. Torgue in the OTL Borderlands games). Bloodlust features a very simple plot which takes a back seat to the gameplay so that players don't have to think too much about things while they're blowing enemies away. The story is that a mad scientist, Dr. Dmitri Helgeist, has discovered a way to clone living beings as easily as flicking a switch. He uses this to create an army of supersoldiers, millions in all, and send them marching across the planet, taking over every country they possibly can. The army can't stop them (they're resistant to nuclear weapons thanks to the doctor's modifications), so they're forced to hire mercenaries, and Hank Blood signs up for the job, arming himself with every weapon he can get his hands on and battling Helgeist's armies all over the globe. As the game progresses, Helgeist's DNA splicing abilities progress, enabling him to create more powerful clones and giant mutant creatures, making it more and more difficult for Blood as he continues to shoot his way through the replicant armies. Eventually, Blood confronts Helgeist himself, who does the cliche thing and uses DNA splicing to mutate himself into a giant hideous beast, the last creature Blood has to take down. Of course, the game ends with a sequel hook, as Helgeist leaked his tech on the internet when he died, allowing everyone, even obnoxious bratty kids, to create their own clone armies, and we quickly learn that Blood's work isn't done.
Released on January 10, 2020, exclusively for the Apple Virtua, Bloodlust is an edgy, gritty, insane FPS ride... and many players absolutely love it, due to the complexity of the combat and just how fun it is to go around shooting and looting things. Blood's combat dialogue is hilarious, and players also love that the game never takes itself too seriously, in contrast with a lot of the more deep and serious games of the time. Bloodlust would see loads of DLC in the next couple years following its release, and while some of it (mainly entire story campaigns) would be paid, much of it would be free, including dozens of new missions and some free weapons and weapon skins, adding lots of value to the game after its release. Reviews would mostly average in the mid to high 8s, as reviewers would criticize the game's non-linear levels and lack of exploration, but heap praise on everything else, including its irreverent storyline and dialogue (the game manages to be edgy without ever really becoming offensive for the sake of being offensive, avoiding a crucial mistake that the Arbiter of Sin series made, and also allowing the game to be played a wide variety of people). Sales are quite good, especially for a game so late in the Virtua's lifecycle, and Apple is able to continue their strong 2019 by notching 2020's first major hit.
-
Other Significant Titles for January 2020:
Cloudpunk: OTL's indie cyberpunk delivery game is a TTL Stadia exclusive, coming out slightly earlier in 2020 than it did IOTL. Like OTL, the game has the player piloting a flying car around a futuristic cyberpunk city, making deliveries to various people, while occasionally learning about their stories and making dialogue choices to affect certain quests. Unlike IOTL, the game is a bit more hyped, positioned as a moderately significant Stadia indie, and the game is also somewhat bigger and more expanded from OTL's game, leading to better reviews (averaging in the 8/10 range). Positioned mostly against Bloodlust as a lighter, more plot heavy alternative game (and a cheaper one, at $29.99), it becomes a decent success, continuing the Stadia's success with funding indie studios to develop exclusive games (something Google has utilized extensively ITTL, to great effect).
Contra: Annihilator: Ubisoft brings the Contra series to full 3-D in this shoot 'em up action-RPG title set in a world at war between united armies of freedom and an evil conquering warlord. The game features all the fast paced shooting and difficulty of the classic Contra series, but in full 3-D with modern graphics, and can best be described as a Souls-like shooter. Loot and money drop from killed enemies, but if you're killed before you can spend your money, you're out of luck, while you also drop most of the items you have on hand when you die. This game is absolutely punishing, but also quite a thrill for longtime series fans. It's released on the Reality, Virtua, Stadia, and even the Nexus, and achieves solid reviews, though sales are a bit disappointing, proving that the series doesn't quite hold the sway it once did over players.
-
"When Apple released the Virtua back in 2013, it was a bold experiment in immersive gaming. Would people really be willing to get up and move to play their games? We gave players the option to play with traditional controls, but many of them chose to dive into the Virtua's world, and many of those players even purchased our groundbreaking Oculus headset to dive even deeper into the action. 100 million units sold later, and it's clear that players love immersive gaming and are willing to pay a premium price for it. However, our competition also thrived during this time. That begged the question: how can we put ourselves ahead of the rest of the industry? How can we give players what they want in a game console, while at the same time introducing something they've never seen before? Now, seven years after the release of the Virtua, we have the answer. We have the next big thing in gaming.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Apple Quest."
-Steve Jobs, at a January 27, 2020 press event for Apple's future gaming devices
Apple Introduces Virtua Successor, the Apple Quest, At Gaming Presser
We now know that the successor to the Apple Virtua will be the Apple Quest, and that it will be released this November. The new device is a game console far more powerful than the Virtua, and which will power a new generation of Apple games while also focusing heavily on interactivity and immersion to put players into their games like never before. The Quest will feature the same motion capture technology that powered the Virtua, though its controllers will now consist of a pair of modified gloves that will allow players to control their games with never before seen precision. Before one conjures up bad memories of the Power Glove, rest assured: these gloves are far more ergonomically capable of controlling games, and when demonstrated at the presser, it was easy to see that they represent a step forward from the Virtua's motion controls, putting players in their games like never before. Of course, Apple will offer traditional controls for the Quest, much as they did for the Virtua, and few, if any games will require the full motion controls to be used. The Quest will also come with a next generation Oculus headset which doubles as an "Apple G" device, allowing players to not only stream and play their new Quest games with immersive 3D graphics, but also to play their iPhone G games on the go with full VR as well, utilizing either the Quest glove controls or a traditional controller. Jobs told the gathered reporters that the "Quest" name symbolizes his intention with this new Apple console: to allow players to embark on whatever adventures they desire without ever leaving home.
In addition to showing off the new console, several new games were demonstrated, including a brand new Ecco the Dolphin title called Ecco Evolution, in which the player will be able to control the titular dolphin in a new 3-D adventure, fully immersed under the vast ocean. We also got to see a new IP, Flare: Princess Of The Caldera, which has been announced as a spiritual successor to the Aerio series and features a teenage girl with the power to control fire. Born in the aftermath of a future Yellowstone supervolcano eruption, Flare has been tasked with saving the post-apocalyptic world from the horrors spawned by the erupting volcano, and the player will be able to wield fire in their hands as they guide Flare in her missions, befriending people and protecting them as well. We then got the centerpiece of the presentation: Pixel Quest, the third game in the Pixelworld series which will allow players to literally create worlds with their hands and then inhabit those worlds, joining millions of other players in a vast virtual landscape, Jobs says that Pixel Quest is the kind of game the Quest was designed for, and that it will be included at launch with every Quest system. We got to see some other games on the device, including the new Sonic: The Rings Of Chaos, which is coming to both the Virtua and the Quest, Duality Quest, which is coming in October to the Virtua and then will come to the Quest in December, as well as some third party titles including Watch Dogs Legion, Final Fantasy XV, and Futureshock 2, all of which run great on the new console. Jobs also teased some future titles coming in 2021 and beyond, including a new game based on Jonny Quest, reviving the IP after 22 years of dormancy, and featuring characters and adventures from both the 1960s original series and The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest, while the game itself takes place in an alternate continuity after the original series, serving as an alternate Real Adventures of sorts. We then got to see a game taking place in a gritty medieval kingdom, where we'll be playing as a deposed prince who must team up with his sister to liberate their realm from an usurper. The game does have some fantastical elements, and looked very similar to A Song Of Ice And Fire in overall tone. Finally, we were teased at a new Panzer Dragoon game, which is likely to come in 2022 or later.
We didn't get a price for the new console, though Jobs said to expect a lot more info on the Quest at E3, so it's likely we'll get a price and an exact release date there. The Quest is definitely different from any console that's come before it, and seems to take the design philosophies of the Virtua to their logical conclusion. Whether or not the Quest ends up being Apple's biggest success, the next Power Glove, or something in between will no doubt become clearer when we see what Nintendo has in store, and when the Quest releases late this year.
-from a January 27, 2020 article on Kotaku
I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around the Apple Quest concept but that's probably to blame on the Power Glove and Kinect.
I have no comments for the pathways of politics.
Beyond Ikenfell, Monstrous, The Ghost and Molly McGee, Toy Story: Adventures Through Space and Time, and the finale of Goldilocks: The Series, what other animated shows are currently on Disney Channel? Because it looks to me like we already have a good case for reviving their animated block from the 90s and 2000s.
The gaming output was okay, except for one notable standout at the end.
I already think it would be hard to top the Apple Quest. I mean, we've got new titles from the Ecco and Panzer Dragoon franchises, some top-notch technology at work here, and most shocking of all, but not really in hindsight, a Jonny Quest video game. I mean, that was unexpected in the best of ways when I read that.
Beyond Ikenfell, Monstrous, The Ghost and Molly McGee, Toy Story: Adventures Through Space and Time, and the finale of Goldilocks: The Series, what other animated shows are currently on Disney Channel? Because it looks to me like we already have a good case for reviving their animated block from the 90s and 2000s.
The gaming output was okay, except for one notable standout at the end.
I already think it would be hard to top the Apple Quest. I mean, we've got new titles from the Ecco and Panzer Dragoon franchises, some top-notch technology at work here, and most shocking of all, but not really in hindsight, a Jonny Quest video game. I mean, that was unexpected in the best of ways when I read that.
Reminder to self to read all previous posts on Apple Virtua motion control games to see how they avoided the waggle trap that soured OTL people's opinions of Wii and Xbox 360 Kinect, which then caused Wii U and the Kinect part of Xbox One to bomb.
I'm aware of this, I'm just commenting on how it's very out there even by Apple's TTL standards and what we have here. Using a Kinect like device to enhance Wii style motion controls felt like a natural progression for the Virtua. Gloves, from what I saw on Ry's description, are quite different. It sounds like button inputs are gone entirely using them making it seem to lean harder on the Kinect side which was for many this strange uncanny valley with a lack of player feedback. Apple wouldn't go through with this if they weren't confident (unlike OTL's MS who went all in with Kinect despite any software or gamer support to justify it), but it still sounds weird.
February 2020 - Welcome To The Owl House
PlatinumGames Now Officially Part Of Apple, Producing “At Least Three” Titles For Apple Quest
PlatinumGames, best known as the development studio responsible for producing the Bayonetta series for Apple consoles, has officially become part of Apple, which quietly absorbed the studio late last year according to a recently released financial report. Though PlatinumGames has been part of Apple in all but name since its creation back in 2008, having never produced games for anything other than Apple platforms, this latest news dashes any slim hopes that popular titles such as Bayonetta and Scalebound would make their way to Nintendo or Google systems in the future. It's also known that the company has already been working on games for the Apple Quest, the next generation console revealed in an Apple gaming presser late last month. This includes the fourth game in the Bayonetta series, which could be announced as early as this year's E3, and, according to Kamiya himself, “at least two” other games, both expected to be brand new IPs. A Scalebound sequel is possible, as the game itself performed quite well with critics and players alike back in 2016, but so far there's been no indication that PlatinumGames has been working on one.
This news comes on the heels of the successful release of Mercurun, the company's latest release which launched on the Virtua last week. The game, which stars a protagonist named Mercury who must prevent an invasion of Earth by extraterrestrial beings from the future, blends hack and slash and third person shooter gameplay, and scored excellent reviews from critics (you can check out our review here, in which we awarded the game a 9.0/10). Early reports indicate strong sales, not quite as vigorous as last month's hit title Bloodlust but enough to make Mercurun the second fastest selling video game of the year thus far, not just on the Virtua but overall. While sales of the game are strongest in Japan, it's also topped sales charts in North America and Europe, making it the second major success of the year on the Virtua and continuing Apple's momentum leading up to the release of the Quest later this year.
-from a February 14, 2020 article on Gamespot
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The Falcons' 27-17 victory over the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl LIV completes the third perfect season in NFL history, giving them a 19-0 record on the year. It's also the second Super Bowl win for quarterback Elliot Hobbs, who struck yet another blow for his claim of being the best quarterback in the league, his victory coming on the heels of a win over the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship. Though Andrew Luck still has one more ring than Hobbs, there's still plenty of time for the Falcons' quarterback to make up that deficit, especially considering the fact that he's four years younger than the San Francisco superstar. The Super Bowl win completes what might just be the greatest season ever for an NFL quarterback, with Hobbs' 5,971 yards, 58 touchdowns, and just five interceptions good for an astonishing 129.7 quarterback rating on the season, shattering the previous single season record in that stat category and easily beating out Luck's best season (108.3). As the debate now rages about which quarterback is better, the NFL now has a new rivalry, with the 49ers and Falcons trading the last five Super Bowls, rivaling the dominance that the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers once had during their rivalry in the early 1990s. The Cowboys came out ahead in that rivalry, rattling off three straight conference championship and Super Bowl wins, but the 49ers had dominated the league in the years before that, and now, the 49ers are sharing their dominance of the league with the Atlanta Falcons. Despite these two teams towering over the league for the past half-decade, the Buffalo Bills, who gave Atlanta a tough game in the Super Bowl, remain a strong potential rival from the AFC, and other AFC teams, including the Titans, Patriots, Jets, Steelers, Browns, and even the Colts, who returned to the AFC championship game this year and have a squad of talented young players, could prove competitive as the two NFC giants continue to assert their dominance. As long as Hobbs and Luck remain healthy, there's little doubt their teams will remain in the Super Bowl conversation for years to come, but they'll need to stay sharp to stay ahead of the other strong teams in the NFC and the AFC.
-from an article on Yahoo! Sports, posted on February 3, 2020
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Rock ruled the 2020 Grammy Awards, with all four general field awards claimed by rockers for the first time in several decades. While the hottest act of the moment, musical prodigy Shannon Sciorra, missed out on Album and Record of the Year, she did claim Best New Artist, as well as Best Song for her hit single "The Clutch". She beat out fellow music prodigy and country star Jackson Wise in what was considered to be a hotly contested Best New Artist field that also included the rap group Technoscope and the rapper Lizzo, and gave an emotional acceptance speech after winning the award, thanking her parents and everyone who helped her record her first album. The night's big winners, however, were The Black Keys, who won both Album and Record of the Year for their hit album Cyclops and their single "Both Sides Of The Same Bridge". The Black Keys wound up being the biggest beneficiaries of the recent rock resurgence, and in their Album of the Year acceptance speech, they even thanked Sciorra, crediting her with helping to return rock songs back to the Billboard charts (Cyclops had two of its singles crack the top 40, with "Both Sides Of The Same Bridge" making it to #19). Sciorra and the Black Keys performed a medley of songs together during the ceremony, which included songs from their own nominated albums as well as classic rock hits that included a haunting cover of Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain". The ceremony was generally an upbeat one, though there were some heartfelt tributes to several music icons that we lost over the past year, including Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones (passing several years after the death of his bandmate Mick Jagger) and Stevie Wonder, who died last September and who was honored with a medley of songs performed by many of the artists his music inspired. It was also notable that many of today's most popular artists, including Taylor Swift and BTS, were shut out nearly completely, with most of the awards going to either newcomers or, in the case of the Black Keys, older acts that have experienced a resurgence. Whether this year's Grammys marks a changing of the guard or merely an anomaly will surely be determined as the decade continues on, but it's clear that the numerous young artists who have burst onto the scene over the past year have already made a major impact in the music industry.
-from a Billboard article recapping the 2020 Grammy Awards, posted on February 3, 2020 (TTL's 2020 Grammy ceremony was a week later than OTL's, due to various butterflies and scheduling changes)
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1906 Dominates Oscars, Sets All-Time Record For Wins In Clean Sweep
Despite stiff competition that included the Korean drama film Parasite and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Brad Bird's disaster epic 1906 won all 14 Academy Awards it was nominated for, sweeping the ceremony and setting an all time record for most Oscar wins by a single film, previously set by Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King. In addition to taking home all the major awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Brad Bird), Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Actress (Patroka Epstein), Best Supporting Actor (Chadwick Boseman), Best Supporting Actress (Sally Field), and Best Adapted Screenplay, the film also won numerous technical categories, including Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing. 1906 has proven to be a sensation, grossing $680 million at the domestic box office (good for #5 all time) and a total of $1.5 billion worldwide. Its success both with critics and fans has been quite unexpected, even with the enormous amount of hype it's received, and Brad Bird seemed quite humbled as he accepted his Best Director Oscar, having nothing but thanks for the audiences who have gone to see the film. Last night's Oscars also represents the culmination of a triumphant comeback for actress Patroka Epstein, who is less than four years removed from her recovery from an accident that left her a quadriplegic. Not only was she nominated for Best Actress at last night's ceremony, but Best Supporting Actress for her performance as slain movie star Sharon Tate in Tarantino's counterfactual tribute to late 1960s Hollywood. The rise of a former Disney Channel kidcom star to A-list Oscar winner would've been almost inconceivable even without the catastrophic neck injury she suffered in 2008, but combined with her recovery (which required a medical breakthrough stem cell therapy) is nothing short of miraculous, and her tearful Oscar acceptance speech was another highlight of the night. Chadwick Boseman also didn't expect himself to be receiving an Oscar, as he's currently in remission from colon cancer which at one point was said to be stage 4. Though 1906 was the night's biggest winner, Parasite, which was nominated for five Oscars, did manage to win Best International Feature Film, and also earned a shoutout from Brad Bird in his acceptance speech for Best Picture, where he predicted that someday, Bong Joon-ho would win an Oscar.
-from an article on Flixscoop, posted on February 10, 2020
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Game Spotlight: The Boiling Isles
The Boiling Isles is an RPG co-produced by Kauldersoft and Pyramid Games, developed by Pyramid Games and directed by Tetsuya Takahashi. Conceived by Dana Terrace, the game is TTL's equivalent of OTL's animated series The Owl House, though it's aimed at a teen to adult audience rather than the younger Disney crowd OTL's show is aimed at. The game is much like the show, though rather than focusing on a 14-year-old girl winding up in a parallel universe, the game centers on an 18-year-old protagonist created by the player, who can be male, female, or nonbinary. Known as the Human, the protagonist is a young person who has just graduated from high school and who wants to see the world for a year before going to college, but is being pressured by their parents into attending an Ivy League school. Faced with being forced out onto the street if they don't matriculate to university, the Human runs away from home and ends up in a strange forest, where they accidentally stumble through a portal leading them to the Boiling Isles, a civilization built upon the decaying body of a dead giant known as the Titan. The Boiling Isles is a world of terrifying creatures and powerful magic, and the Human will have to learn this magic and befriend some of the Isles' magical denizens if they ever wish to make it back home. The game features open world exploration, where the player is allowed to go pretty much anywhere from the start of the game, though many areas are gated off by powerful enemies. It's actually not too difficult to avoid the creatures and monsters, though humanoid enemies are harder to avoid and high-level witches will often appear in areas the player isn't technically supposed to go yet. Gameplay can be somewhat compared to OTL's Xenoblade games, while ITTL, the game is inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist and Final Fantasy XII, the latter of which was also directed by Takahashi. Combat blends a pure action-RPG system with the battle system from Xenoblade, in which special attacks are queued up and then unleashed when they're finished charging. Players can use melee attacks and weak glyph spells in real time, while more complex spells, generated via either the combination of glyphs or (later in the game) the Human's infused magical powers have to be queued up like the special attacks in Xenoblade, and have a cooldown meter. There are also context sensitive actions, ranging from melee attacks to powerful spell commands, which are unleashed via a QTE action that can be used in certain situations, such as when a player parries an attack, when striking an enemy at a certain time, or when teaming up with a party member. Speaking of party members, the player can have up to two companions at a time, to create a party of three, and though these NPCs can be given instructions in battle, they can't be directly controlled (fortunately, their AI is extremely good, so players generally don't have to worry about them doing the wrong thing in battle). As The Boiling Isles is TTL's equivalent of The Owl House, many of the same settings, including the eponymous house itself, appear in TTL's game. However, there's a lot more to do in the game, with Bonesborough and Latissa just two of more than a dozen towns and cities that can be visited by the player as they explore the realm. The Owl House itself is also massive, appearing as a small shack on the surface, but growing the more the player ventures through the game, gaining its own basement, a hidden atelier, and more, with entire questlines taking place just within the Owl House. The game's tone is darker overall than the OTL TV show, with Dana Terrace's love for horror permeating the game's environs. Many of the creatures and monsters that can be battled are quite horrific in nature, while the Boiling Isles itself is full of unsettling sights (though the game's horror is kept to within the boundaries allowed by the Teen rating, the game can still be quite unsettling). Though Hexside still exists, many of the OTL show's magic school tropes are diminished, with Hexside serving a somewhat similar purpose to Winterhold in OTL's Skyrim: a hub for magical knowledge and the source of a few quests, but not the focus of the overall game. The Boiling Isles trades a bit of graphical detail for the size of its world, so graphics, while quite impressive, aren't on the level of the best games of its day, and can be considered average to slightly above average for an eighth generation game (though they do get a notable boost from the Stadia). The game features many of the same voice actors as the OTL show, with Mae Whitman as Amity, Wendie Malick as Eda, Cissy Jones as Lilith, and Zeno Robinson as Hunter, and Sarah-Nicole Robles is even one of the eight selectable voices for the Human protagonist (though she does use a slightly deeper voice than the one she uses for OTL's Luz, as the character is supposed to be older here). The game's soundtrack is composed by a team that includes T.J. Hill (the composer for the OTL show), with contributions from both American and Japanese composers (most notably Yasunori Mitsuda).
The first part of the storyline always takes place in and around the Owl House, as the Human is briefly taken in by Eda the Owl Lady, the first witch to encounter them when they enter this strange new world. The Owl House serves as a hub for much of the early game and remains relevant throughout the game, particularly if the player maintains a strong relationship with Eda. Eda, like in the OTL show, serves as a mentor to the player, teaching the player about magic and about the world, and her personality in the game is fairly similar to what it is on the show (though in the game, she's a bit more vulgar). However, the player is expected to venture outward on their own, either to progress through the main quest or to embark on side quests and meet new characters. Many of these new characters, including Willow, Gus, Amity, Boscha, and Hunter, play fairly similar roles to what they do on the OTL show: Willow is a shy, smart witch who has a hidden talent for plant magic, Gus is an illusionist with an interest in humans, Boscha is a jock and a bully (though she has more hidden depths in the game than we've seen on the show so far), Hunter works under Emperor Belos as an apprentice and agent, while Amity starts out in an antagonist role but can soon become a close ally to the Human, or, if the Human is a female character, Amity can become a love interest. Everything in The Boiling Isles is a shade more mature than it is on OTL's Owl House: Amity's mother Odalia isn't just psychologically abusive like in the show, but it's implied she's physically abusive as well, as a Human with high enough perception/empathy stats can see the bruises, Eda and Lilith's rivalry is much darker and Lilith is a much more morally ambiguous character, Emperor Belos is a practitioner of blood magic, etc. Every major character has hidden depths that can be explored via dialogue trees and questlines, and the Human can become friend or foe to pretty much every major character in the game. The only character the player can't become an enemy to is Eda, and the only character the player can't align themselves with is Belos. Everyone else can go either way, depending on the player's choices. The player has two sets of stats that can be leveled up: their combat stats (HP, Strength, Intelligence, Agility, etc.) and their personality stats (Perception, Empathy, Cleverness, etc.), with personality stats being the major driver of quests and dialogue in the game. While combat stats are important (you can do a pacifist run and avoid killing humanoids, but sometimes it's just not possible to avoid combat with creatures), personality stats directly affect how the Human reacts to the various things happening around them, and will have a big impact in how the player interacts with the Boiling Isles and its residents.
The story in general follows many of the same beats as the OTL show, with the Boiling Isles ruled by Emperor Belos. Eda plays a major role in that she has the power to foil the Emperor's plans, but she doesn't have a portal key in the game itself, so Belos is mostly pursuing her to get her out of the way, using her sister Lilith, who leads the Emperor's Coven, in order to do so. Lilith plays a major role as the antagonist of about the first third of the game's storyline, and how the player chooses to deal with Lilith will have a major impact on how the rest of the story plays out, as she can be killed, forced into exile, or recruited as an ally (not as a companion, but as a resident of the Owl House reconciled with Eda, along as a quest giver). The player's relationship to Amity Blight also plays a major role in the storyline, as Amity's parents are magical weapon creators who play a major role in the latter half of the story, and if Amity is an ally, the player won't have to deal with her parents quite as much. Amity Blight is perhaps the game's most prominent NPC and companion, and several major questlines, both storyline related and optional, directly involve her. Just as in the OTL show, she starts out as an antagonist, though she's not so much a bully as she is an arrogant rich girl who dismisses the player character for being a human and who takes little interest in them, working mostly to advance the goals of herself and her family. The Human initially reaches out to her as part of an early quest, and if they make an effort to befriend her (which requires only a minimum of personality specs and can be done in pretty much any playthrough), they'll start the process of gaining Amity as an ally, and eventually as a companion, where her powerful magic and ability to combo with the Human prove to be quite invaluable. Unless the player chooses to be a complete jerk, it's not hard to get at least two companions to form a full party (and even if they are a jerk, there's two companions later on that can still join). There are up to fourteen possible companions in all, including the OTL characters Amity, Willow, Gus, Boscha, Hunter, King, Viney, Jerbo, and Raine, and five other original TTL characters, including Declan, a powerful young member of the Healer coven, Lisette, a librarian who used to be a friend to Emperor Belos, and Chain, a non-magical monster hunter who has the ability to trap and unleash various magical creatures. Each potential companion has their own questline, with many having several, and it's to the player's benefit to explore these questlines and build up their relationship with these characters, as it'll provide boosts and combo opportunities in battle.
Belos' ultimate goal is similar to that of the show: to bring about the Day of Unity, which will merge the Boiling Isles with the human world. This happens about two-thirds of the way into the game, and once this happens, there's a short sequence of quests taking place in the Human's hometown in Connecticut, in which the Human must briefly visit the human world, protect the people from Belos' invasion, and even reunite with their parents for a short time (there's no Vee/Creepy Luz storyline in TTL's game, though basilisks do exist in the game and play a role in a few side questlines), before repelling the invasion. However, as some of their friends are captured by Belos, they're forced to return to the Boiling Isles to take down Belos once and for all. The last quarter or so of the main storyline involves the Human rescuing their companions (the ones they have, anyway), discovering the last ancient secrets of the Titan, and defeating Belos before plunging into the heart of the awakened Titan to do battle with an even stronger force there. If King's storyline has been completed (in which the Human helps King reunite with his family and awaken his true nature as the King of Demons), this plays out slightly differently, but no matter how the storyline plays out and who the Human has chosen to befriend, the storyline concludes with a battle against an eldritch being within the heart of the Titan, in which the Human and their friends must finish off the thing possessing the Titan, allowing it to rest for eternity and saving the Boiling Isles and the human realm. The Human must then choose whether to return home through the closing portal, leaving behind their friends in the Boiling Isles forever, or stay in the Boiling Isles and leave the human realm behind. However, if the Human chooses to return home and they have a strong enough bond with either their love interest or Eda (if the Human's bond is strong enough with both of them to trigger the scene, it'll be the love interest who shows up no matter what) then, in a bonus ending scene after the credits, that character will come to the human realm to reunite with the Human and reveal the existence of a persistent portal.
The Boiling Isles is released on February 28, 2020 for the Reality, Virtua, and Stadia. Though the Stadia version of the game has the best graphics and FPS, the Reality version has some timed exclusive DLC items and quests (the Virtua gets nothing, but is still a good version of the game). It will eventually be ported to both the Apple Quest and the Reality successor. Reviews for the game are outstanding, praising both the combat system (which blends many of the best aspects of action-RPGs and traditional RPGs), the massive world, the horror motif, and the game's extensive questlines and character development. Amity Blight in particular becomes as popular with TTL's players as she does amongst fans of the OTL show, and she's considered one of 2020's best new characters overall. It's easily the best game to ever come out of Pyramid, counting both Terror Trip titles, and reviews average in the mid to high 9s, making it an instant Game of the Year contender. Sales, as can be expected for such a well reviewed and massively hyped game, are extremely vigorous, crossing three million copies in its first week of release, with the Reality version seeing the most sales, followed closely by the Stadia and Virtua versions. In the years following the game's release, numerous DLCs would be released, expanding upon the game's world and introducing new regions, characters, and villains. It would expand from merely a single game to a full fledged franchise, the latest massive hit gaming IP, and the years to come would see much buzz about a possible sequel, though with development being so exhausting and expensive for Pyramid, and the game's DLC helping to keep the game's shelf life long, it would be quite some time before even a whisper of a sequel would emerge, with Pyramid instead using their profits from the game to work on other, smaller projects, sticking strongly to their indie roots.
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Other Significant Titles For February 2020:
Empire Of Sin: Apart from The Boiling Isles and Mercurun, the month's only other title of any significance is this "XCOM meets gangsters" strategy RPG that proved to be somewhat of a flop IOTL but emerges as a minor hit for the Game Boy Zero, with slightly more refined gameplay than OTL's version of the game, as well as a more engaging storyline. It stands in contrast to the epic Boiling Isles and frenetic Mercurun, carving out a decent little niche and achieving slightly better critical and sales success than OTL. It also shows up on the PC, though it experiences the most success on the Zero as a fun little handheld title.
PlatinumGames, best known as the development studio responsible for producing the Bayonetta series for Apple consoles, has officially become part of Apple, which quietly absorbed the studio late last year according to a recently released financial report. Though PlatinumGames has been part of Apple in all but name since its creation back in 2008, having never produced games for anything other than Apple platforms, this latest news dashes any slim hopes that popular titles such as Bayonetta and Scalebound would make their way to Nintendo or Google systems in the future. It's also known that the company has already been working on games for the Apple Quest, the next generation console revealed in an Apple gaming presser late last month. This includes the fourth game in the Bayonetta series, which could be announced as early as this year's E3, and, according to Kamiya himself, “at least two” other games, both expected to be brand new IPs. A Scalebound sequel is possible, as the game itself performed quite well with critics and players alike back in 2016, but so far there's been no indication that PlatinumGames has been working on one.
This news comes on the heels of the successful release of Mercurun, the company's latest release which launched on the Virtua last week. The game, which stars a protagonist named Mercury who must prevent an invasion of Earth by extraterrestrial beings from the future, blends hack and slash and third person shooter gameplay, and scored excellent reviews from critics (you can check out our review here, in which we awarded the game a 9.0/10). Early reports indicate strong sales, not quite as vigorous as last month's hit title Bloodlust but enough to make Mercurun the second fastest selling video game of the year thus far, not just on the Virtua but overall. While sales of the game are strongest in Japan, it's also topped sales charts in North America and Europe, making it the second major success of the year on the Virtua and continuing Apple's momentum leading up to the release of the Quest later this year.
-from a February 14, 2020 article on Gamespot
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The Falcons' 27-17 victory over the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl LIV completes the third perfect season in NFL history, giving them a 19-0 record on the year. It's also the second Super Bowl win for quarterback Elliot Hobbs, who struck yet another blow for his claim of being the best quarterback in the league, his victory coming on the heels of a win over the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship. Though Andrew Luck still has one more ring than Hobbs, there's still plenty of time for the Falcons' quarterback to make up that deficit, especially considering the fact that he's four years younger than the San Francisco superstar. The Super Bowl win completes what might just be the greatest season ever for an NFL quarterback, with Hobbs' 5,971 yards, 58 touchdowns, and just five interceptions good for an astonishing 129.7 quarterback rating on the season, shattering the previous single season record in that stat category and easily beating out Luck's best season (108.3). As the debate now rages about which quarterback is better, the NFL now has a new rivalry, with the 49ers and Falcons trading the last five Super Bowls, rivaling the dominance that the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers once had during their rivalry in the early 1990s. The Cowboys came out ahead in that rivalry, rattling off three straight conference championship and Super Bowl wins, but the 49ers had dominated the league in the years before that, and now, the 49ers are sharing their dominance of the league with the Atlanta Falcons. Despite these two teams towering over the league for the past half-decade, the Buffalo Bills, who gave Atlanta a tough game in the Super Bowl, remain a strong potential rival from the AFC, and other AFC teams, including the Titans, Patriots, Jets, Steelers, Browns, and even the Colts, who returned to the AFC championship game this year and have a squad of talented young players, could prove competitive as the two NFC giants continue to assert their dominance. As long as Hobbs and Luck remain healthy, there's little doubt their teams will remain in the Super Bowl conversation for years to come, but they'll need to stay sharp to stay ahead of the other strong teams in the NFC and the AFC.
-from an article on Yahoo! Sports, posted on February 3, 2020
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Rock ruled the 2020 Grammy Awards, with all four general field awards claimed by rockers for the first time in several decades. While the hottest act of the moment, musical prodigy Shannon Sciorra, missed out on Album and Record of the Year, she did claim Best New Artist, as well as Best Song for her hit single "The Clutch". She beat out fellow music prodigy and country star Jackson Wise in what was considered to be a hotly contested Best New Artist field that also included the rap group Technoscope and the rapper Lizzo, and gave an emotional acceptance speech after winning the award, thanking her parents and everyone who helped her record her first album. The night's big winners, however, were The Black Keys, who won both Album and Record of the Year for their hit album Cyclops and their single "Both Sides Of The Same Bridge". The Black Keys wound up being the biggest beneficiaries of the recent rock resurgence, and in their Album of the Year acceptance speech, they even thanked Sciorra, crediting her with helping to return rock songs back to the Billboard charts (Cyclops had two of its singles crack the top 40, with "Both Sides Of The Same Bridge" making it to #19). Sciorra and the Black Keys performed a medley of songs together during the ceremony, which included songs from their own nominated albums as well as classic rock hits that included a haunting cover of Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain". The ceremony was generally an upbeat one, though there were some heartfelt tributes to several music icons that we lost over the past year, including Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones (passing several years after the death of his bandmate Mick Jagger) and Stevie Wonder, who died last September and who was honored with a medley of songs performed by many of the artists his music inspired. It was also notable that many of today's most popular artists, including Taylor Swift and BTS, were shut out nearly completely, with most of the awards going to either newcomers or, in the case of the Black Keys, older acts that have experienced a resurgence. Whether this year's Grammys marks a changing of the guard or merely an anomaly will surely be determined as the decade continues on, but it's clear that the numerous young artists who have burst onto the scene over the past year have already made a major impact in the music industry.
-from a Billboard article recapping the 2020 Grammy Awards, posted on February 3, 2020 (TTL's 2020 Grammy ceremony was a week later than OTL's, due to various butterflies and scheduling changes)
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1906 Dominates Oscars, Sets All-Time Record For Wins In Clean Sweep
Despite stiff competition that included the Korean drama film Parasite and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Brad Bird's disaster epic 1906 won all 14 Academy Awards it was nominated for, sweeping the ceremony and setting an all time record for most Oscar wins by a single film, previously set by Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King. In addition to taking home all the major awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Brad Bird), Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Actress (Patroka Epstein), Best Supporting Actor (Chadwick Boseman), Best Supporting Actress (Sally Field), and Best Adapted Screenplay, the film also won numerous technical categories, including Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing. 1906 has proven to be a sensation, grossing $680 million at the domestic box office (good for #5 all time) and a total of $1.5 billion worldwide. Its success both with critics and fans has been quite unexpected, even with the enormous amount of hype it's received, and Brad Bird seemed quite humbled as he accepted his Best Director Oscar, having nothing but thanks for the audiences who have gone to see the film. Last night's Oscars also represents the culmination of a triumphant comeback for actress Patroka Epstein, who is less than four years removed from her recovery from an accident that left her a quadriplegic. Not only was she nominated for Best Actress at last night's ceremony, but Best Supporting Actress for her performance as slain movie star Sharon Tate in Tarantino's counterfactual tribute to late 1960s Hollywood. The rise of a former Disney Channel kidcom star to A-list Oscar winner would've been almost inconceivable even without the catastrophic neck injury she suffered in 2008, but combined with her recovery (which required a medical breakthrough stem cell therapy) is nothing short of miraculous, and her tearful Oscar acceptance speech was another highlight of the night. Chadwick Boseman also didn't expect himself to be receiving an Oscar, as he's currently in remission from colon cancer which at one point was said to be stage 4. Though 1906 was the night's biggest winner, Parasite, which was nominated for five Oscars, did manage to win Best International Feature Film, and also earned a shoutout from Brad Bird in his acceptance speech for Best Picture, where he predicted that someday, Bong Joon-ho would win an Oscar.
-from an article on Flixscoop, posted on February 10, 2020
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Game Spotlight: The Boiling Isles
The Boiling Isles is an RPG co-produced by Kauldersoft and Pyramid Games, developed by Pyramid Games and directed by Tetsuya Takahashi. Conceived by Dana Terrace, the game is TTL's equivalent of OTL's animated series The Owl House, though it's aimed at a teen to adult audience rather than the younger Disney crowd OTL's show is aimed at. The game is much like the show, though rather than focusing on a 14-year-old girl winding up in a parallel universe, the game centers on an 18-year-old protagonist created by the player, who can be male, female, or nonbinary. Known as the Human, the protagonist is a young person who has just graduated from high school and who wants to see the world for a year before going to college, but is being pressured by their parents into attending an Ivy League school. Faced with being forced out onto the street if they don't matriculate to university, the Human runs away from home and ends up in a strange forest, where they accidentally stumble through a portal leading them to the Boiling Isles, a civilization built upon the decaying body of a dead giant known as the Titan. The Boiling Isles is a world of terrifying creatures and powerful magic, and the Human will have to learn this magic and befriend some of the Isles' magical denizens if they ever wish to make it back home. The game features open world exploration, where the player is allowed to go pretty much anywhere from the start of the game, though many areas are gated off by powerful enemies. It's actually not too difficult to avoid the creatures and monsters, though humanoid enemies are harder to avoid and high-level witches will often appear in areas the player isn't technically supposed to go yet. Gameplay can be somewhat compared to OTL's Xenoblade games, while ITTL, the game is inspired by Fullmetal Alchemist and Final Fantasy XII, the latter of which was also directed by Takahashi. Combat blends a pure action-RPG system with the battle system from Xenoblade, in which special attacks are queued up and then unleashed when they're finished charging. Players can use melee attacks and weak glyph spells in real time, while more complex spells, generated via either the combination of glyphs or (later in the game) the Human's infused magical powers have to be queued up like the special attacks in Xenoblade, and have a cooldown meter. There are also context sensitive actions, ranging from melee attacks to powerful spell commands, which are unleashed via a QTE action that can be used in certain situations, such as when a player parries an attack, when striking an enemy at a certain time, or when teaming up with a party member. Speaking of party members, the player can have up to two companions at a time, to create a party of three, and though these NPCs can be given instructions in battle, they can't be directly controlled (fortunately, their AI is extremely good, so players generally don't have to worry about them doing the wrong thing in battle). As The Boiling Isles is TTL's equivalent of The Owl House, many of the same settings, including the eponymous house itself, appear in TTL's game. However, there's a lot more to do in the game, with Bonesborough and Latissa just two of more than a dozen towns and cities that can be visited by the player as they explore the realm. The Owl House itself is also massive, appearing as a small shack on the surface, but growing the more the player ventures through the game, gaining its own basement, a hidden atelier, and more, with entire questlines taking place just within the Owl House. The game's tone is darker overall than the OTL TV show, with Dana Terrace's love for horror permeating the game's environs. Many of the creatures and monsters that can be battled are quite horrific in nature, while the Boiling Isles itself is full of unsettling sights (though the game's horror is kept to within the boundaries allowed by the Teen rating, the game can still be quite unsettling). Though Hexside still exists, many of the OTL show's magic school tropes are diminished, with Hexside serving a somewhat similar purpose to Winterhold in OTL's Skyrim: a hub for magical knowledge and the source of a few quests, but not the focus of the overall game. The Boiling Isles trades a bit of graphical detail for the size of its world, so graphics, while quite impressive, aren't on the level of the best games of its day, and can be considered average to slightly above average for an eighth generation game (though they do get a notable boost from the Stadia). The game features many of the same voice actors as the OTL show, with Mae Whitman as Amity, Wendie Malick as Eda, Cissy Jones as Lilith, and Zeno Robinson as Hunter, and Sarah-Nicole Robles is even one of the eight selectable voices for the Human protagonist (though she does use a slightly deeper voice than the one she uses for OTL's Luz, as the character is supposed to be older here). The game's soundtrack is composed by a team that includes T.J. Hill (the composer for the OTL show), with contributions from both American and Japanese composers (most notably Yasunori Mitsuda).
The first part of the storyline always takes place in and around the Owl House, as the Human is briefly taken in by Eda the Owl Lady, the first witch to encounter them when they enter this strange new world. The Owl House serves as a hub for much of the early game and remains relevant throughout the game, particularly if the player maintains a strong relationship with Eda. Eda, like in the OTL show, serves as a mentor to the player, teaching the player about magic and about the world, and her personality in the game is fairly similar to what it is on the show (though in the game, she's a bit more vulgar). However, the player is expected to venture outward on their own, either to progress through the main quest or to embark on side quests and meet new characters. Many of these new characters, including Willow, Gus, Amity, Boscha, and Hunter, play fairly similar roles to what they do on the OTL show: Willow is a shy, smart witch who has a hidden talent for plant magic, Gus is an illusionist with an interest in humans, Boscha is a jock and a bully (though she has more hidden depths in the game than we've seen on the show so far), Hunter works under Emperor Belos as an apprentice and agent, while Amity starts out in an antagonist role but can soon become a close ally to the Human, or, if the Human is a female character, Amity can become a love interest. Everything in The Boiling Isles is a shade more mature than it is on OTL's Owl House: Amity's mother Odalia isn't just psychologically abusive like in the show, but it's implied she's physically abusive as well, as a Human with high enough perception/empathy stats can see the bruises, Eda and Lilith's rivalry is much darker and Lilith is a much more morally ambiguous character, Emperor Belos is a practitioner of blood magic, etc. Every major character has hidden depths that can be explored via dialogue trees and questlines, and the Human can become friend or foe to pretty much every major character in the game. The only character the player can't become an enemy to is Eda, and the only character the player can't align themselves with is Belos. Everyone else can go either way, depending on the player's choices. The player has two sets of stats that can be leveled up: their combat stats (HP, Strength, Intelligence, Agility, etc.) and their personality stats (Perception, Empathy, Cleverness, etc.), with personality stats being the major driver of quests and dialogue in the game. While combat stats are important (you can do a pacifist run and avoid killing humanoids, but sometimes it's just not possible to avoid combat with creatures), personality stats directly affect how the Human reacts to the various things happening around them, and will have a big impact in how the player interacts with the Boiling Isles and its residents.
The story in general follows many of the same beats as the OTL show, with the Boiling Isles ruled by Emperor Belos. Eda plays a major role in that she has the power to foil the Emperor's plans, but she doesn't have a portal key in the game itself, so Belos is mostly pursuing her to get her out of the way, using her sister Lilith, who leads the Emperor's Coven, in order to do so. Lilith plays a major role as the antagonist of about the first third of the game's storyline, and how the player chooses to deal with Lilith will have a major impact on how the rest of the story plays out, as she can be killed, forced into exile, or recruited as an ally (not as a companion, but as a resident of the Owl House reconciled with Eda, along as a quest giver). The player's relationship to Amity Blight also plays a major role in the storyline, as Amity's parents are magical weapon creators who play a major role in the latter half of the story, and if Amity is an ally, the player won't have to deal with her parents quite as much. Amity Blight is perhaps the game's most prominent NPC and companion, and several major questlines, both storyline related and optional, directly involve her. Just as in the OTL show, she starts out as an antagonist, though she's not so much a bully as she is an arrogant rich girl who dismisses the player character for being a human and who takes little interest in them, working mostly to advance the goals of herself and her family. The Human initially reaches out to her as part of an early quest, and if they make an effort to befriend her (which requires only a minimum of personality specs and can be done in pretty much any playthrough), they'll start the process of gaining Amity as an ally, and eventually as a companion, where her powerful magic and ability to combo with the Human prove to be quite invaluable. Unless the player chooses to be a complete jerk, it's not hard to get at least two companions to form a full party (and even if they are a jerk, there's two companions later on that can still join). There are up to fourteen possible companions in all, including the OTL characters Amity, Willow, Gus, Boscha, Hunter, King, Viney, Jerbo, and Raine, and five other original TTL characters, including Declan, a powerful young member of the Healer coven, Lisette, a librarian who used to be a friend to Emperor Belos, and Chain, a non-magical monster hunter who has the ability to trap and unleash various magical creatures. Each potential companion has their own questline, with many having several, and it's to the player's benefit to explore these questlines and build up their relationship with these characters, as it'll provide boosts and combo opportunities in battle.
Belos' ultimate goal is similar to that of the show: to bring about the Day of Unity, which will merge the Boiling Isles with the human world. This happens about two-thirds of the way into the game, and once this happens, there's a short sequence of quests taking place in the Human's hometown in Connecticut, in which the Human must briefly visit the human world, protect the people from Belos' invasion, and even reunite with their parents for a short time (there's no Vee/Creepy Luz storyline in TTL's game, though basilisks do exist in the game and play a role in a few side questlines), before repelling the invasion. However, as some of their friends are captured by Belos, they're forced to return to the Boiling Isles to take down Belos once and for all. The last quarter or so of the main storyline involves the Human rescuing their companions (the ones they have, anyway), discovering the last ancient secrets of the Titan, and defeating Belos before plunging into the heart of the awakened Titan to do battle with an even stronger force there. If King's storyline has been completed (in which the Human helps King reunite with his family and awaken his true nature as the King of Demons), this plays out slightly differently, but no matter how the storyline plays out and who the Human has chosen to befriend, the storyline concludes with a battle against an eldritch being within the heart of the Titan, in which the Human and their friends must finish off the thing possessing the Titan, allowing it to rest for eternity and saving the Boiling Isles and the human realm. The Human must then choose whether to return home through the closing portal, leaving behind their friends in the Boiling Isles forever, or stay in the Boiling Isles and leave the human realm behind. However, if the Human chooses to return home and they have a strong enough bond with either their love interest or Eda (if the Human's bond is strong enough with both of them to trigger the scene, it'll be the love interest who shows up no matter what) then, in a bonus ending scene after the credits, that character will come to the human realm to reunite with the Human and reveal the existence of a persistent portal.
The Boiling Isles is released on February 28, 2020 for the Reality, Virtua, and Stadia. Though the Stadia version of the game has the best graphics and FPS, the Reality version has some timed exclusive DLC items and quests (the Virtua gets nothing, but is still a good version of the game). It will eventually be ported to both the Apple Quest and the Reality successor. Reviews for the game are outstanding, praising both the combat system (which blends many of the best aspects of action-RPGs and traditional RPGs), the massive world, the horror motif, and the game's extensive questlines and character development. Amity Blight in particular becomes as popular with TTL's players as she does amongst fans of the OTL show, and she's considered one of 2020's best new characters overall. It's easily the best game to ever come out of Pyramid, counting both Terror Trip titles, and reviews average in the mid to high 9s, making it an instant Game of the Year contender. Sales, as can be expected for such a well reviewed and massively hyped game, are extremely vigorous, crossing three million copies in its first week of release, with the Reality version seeing the most sales, followed closely by the Stadia and Virtua versions. In the years following the game's release, numerous DLCs would be released, expanding upon the game's world and introducing new regions, characters, and villains. It would expand from merely a single game to a full fledged franchise, the latest massive hit gaming IP, and the years to come would see much buzz about a possible sequel, though with development being so exhausting and expensive for Pyramid, and the game's DLC helping to keep the game's shelf life long, it would be quite some time before even a whisper of a sequel would emerge, with Pyramid instead using their profits from the game to work on other, smaller projects, sticking strongly to their indie roots.
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Other Significant Titles For February 2020:
Empire Of Sin: Apart from The Boiling Isles and Mercurun, the month's only other title of any significance is this "XCOM meets gangsters" strategy RPG that proved to be somewhat of a flop IOTL but emerges as a minor hit for the Game Boy Zero, with slightly more refined gameplay than OTL's version of the game, as well as a more engaging storyline. It stands in contrast to the epic Boiling Isles and frenetic Mercurun, carving out a decent little niche and achieving slightly better critical and sales success than OTL. It also shows up on the PC, though it experiences the most success on the Zero as a fun little handheld title.
The word series winners are on text, but yeah a list is easier.
About Stanley cup, as we barely knew about hockey we rarely touch it but we're doing something later on