[PATREON UNLOCK] Update Patch - February 2025

Update Patch News Roundup (09/02/25)

Welcome to February! As usual, here’s Update Patch, where we run through a selection of news from the ever-changing world of video games.

Layoffs at Bioware En Route To The Next Mass Effect

You may remember that at the end of January, Bioware General Manager Gary McKay announced in a blog post that the studio behind such games as Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic was now “taking the opportunity to reimagine how we work” by transferring staff to different teams at Electronic Arts. Now, IGN has reported that BioWare is down to less than 100 employees; less than half of the team working on Dragon Age: The Veilguard during its production (per Bloomberg.) A sad fate for a studio that, despite Veilguard’s supposed failure to meet EA’s commercial expectations, persevered through a gruelling production process to release a game many folks quite liked. 

Digital Eclipse’s Remake Of Wizardry: Proving Grounds Of The Mad Overlord Wins Grammy Award For Best Score Soundtrack

Wizardry: Proving Ground of the Mad Overlord is one of the most influential role-playing games ever made. Last year’s remake, courtesy of Digital Eclipse, sought to update the game for a new audience while preserving its cruelty. It didn’t quite win me over, but Paste’s resident Wizardry superfan Dia Lacina loved it but I’m glad to see that the remake’s composer Winfred Phillips won an award for “Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media” at the Grammys. Quite an honour for a game that, as in its Apple II original form, didn’t have any music at all! 

Frustration And Mismanagement At Warner Bros Discovery’s Games Division

Per Bloomberg’s games scoopmaster Jason Schreier, Warner Bros Discovery’s games division head David Haddad is stepping down in the wake of a series of high-profile failures. The Untitled Wonder Woman game by Shadow of Mordor studio Monolith Productions may be on death’s door as it is apparently stuck in development hell; Rocksteady’s next title has a long way to go, following the failure of its live service game Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League; new licensed titles from WB Games Montreal and Avalanche Studios have underperformed. A reminder that games struggle not just because of studio mismanagement but due to problems even higher in the chain of command.

ESA Set To Launch Iicon In 2026

Not so long ago, the Entertainment Software Association cancelled its once famous, now infamous, Electronic Entertainment Expo to the dustbin of history. Now the lobbying body has announced the Interactive Innovation Conference, or Iicon, intended to “connect visionaries, thought leaders and innovators from across industries to harness the power of interactive entertainment” per its press release. Perhaps this represents a return to the old days of E3, when the conference was a service for retailers and executives rather than the sturm und drang showcase it became. Microsoft, Nintendo of America and Epic Games among others will reportedly be involved.

Treyarch Co-Founder Pleads Guilty To Destruction Of Firefighting Plane Via Drone During LA Fires

In perhaps the most embarrassing video game news this week, Treyarch co-founder Peter T. Akemann, who most recently worked at Skydance New Media has pled guilty to accidentally crashing his drone into a Super Scooper firefighting plane deployed to manage the recent terrifying fires in Los Angeles (per Game Developer). I don’t know what to say about this one except that I feel for those further endangered by this man’s selfishness in the face of an ecological catastrophe.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Announces Release Date With New Trailer

Following a PlayStation Store leak, Konami officially published a new trailer for its upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. It is now set to release on August 28th 2025. A remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, one of the most beloved games in the Metal Gear series, Delta has a lot to live up to. It is also Konami’s first Metal Gear release (and, to be frank, the first high-profile console release headed internally rather than by a third party) since 2018.

I’ve Had Enough! Wario Land 4 Added To Nintendo Switch Online Library

If you happen to have a Nintendo Switch Online Membership as well as an Expansion Pass, you can now play the classic Gameboy Advance game Wario Land 4 on the console. If you’re a fan of Wariophilic indie titles Pizza Tower and ANTONBLAST, why not return to the game that started it all? Nobody made zany platformers replete with off-kilter jokes and sound design quite like Nintendo R&D1. 

MercurySteam Teases Upcoming Title “Project Iron”

Via its Twitter account, the studio MercurySteam announced an upcoming title in collaboration with 505Games titled Project Iron. Could this be an original title? Or perhaps another attempt at 3D Castlevania? While I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the developer following its Lords of Shadow releases, the developer has certainly proved its chops when Metroid Dread won a lot of people over in 2021. Project Iron may be a good opportunity to see just how much the studio has learned through working with Nintendo.

Rooster Teeth Acquired From Warner Bros Discovery By Co-Founder

In video-game adjacent news, Rooster Teeth co-founder Burnie Burns announced via a press release that he has reacquired the studio from its former owner Warner Bros. Discovery. Considering Rooster Teeth’s focus on animation, and CEO David Zazlav’s noted antipathy towards that medium, I’m happy to see the studio in the hands of somebody able to appreciate what it was capable of at its height. That said, though, I’ve read enough horror stories about Rooster Teeth’s work culture to wonder what will have to change for the studio to be worth saving.

…And, Two New Fan Translations

Fan Translations International released an English translation of Time Travelers, an adventure game for the 3DS developed by Level5 that shares some staff with the beloved 2008 Wii visual novel 428: Shibuya Scramble. Meanwhile, the website 46okumen released an English translation of the visually stunning PC-98 RPG Appareden: The Sacrosanct Dragon.

Update Patch News Roundup (17/02/25)

t’s time once again for Update Patch, where we run through a selection of news from the ever-changing world of video games.

PlayStation State Of Play

Sony aired its first State of Play of 2025, teasing games coming to the PlayStation 5 within the next year or two. Announcements included last week’s Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater trailer, another Five Nights at Freddy’s game titled Secret of the Mimic, a new game in the Shinobi series made by Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap developer Lizardcube, and the Doom 2016-ish shooter Metal Eden among others. Not to mention one last preview of the soon-to-be-released Monster Hunter Wilds. Further trailers of interest are listed below.

Housemarque Returns To PlayStation With Saros

Returnal was one of the PlayStation 5’s first big exclusives, and while it didn’t please everybody, it was at least a big, ambitious swing for its developer Housemarque. Now the studio’s next game, Saros, has been announced for 2026. We don’t know much about it yet except that it will be another action game with roguelike elements. My hope is that Housemarque retains the lessons it learned as an arcade developer even as it makes a play for the expensive 3D action-adventure space.

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds Announces Closed Network Test

Sonic the Hedgehog is back in a new racing title with an extradimensional twist. Drive through a ring portal and your furry friend is transported to a range of bizarre locales. Which will you choose? While earlier Sonic Racing games were developed by Sumo Digital, Sega has teased that this one (per Automaton) involves the developers of the Initial D arcade games. Here’s hoping that it’s at least as good as 2012’s Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. A closed network test is scheduled for February 21.

No Lies Detected! Lies of P: Overture Is On The Way

I still can’t figure out to this day if Lies of P is just as good as its fans say, or if it’s a runaway prank played on us by games journalists and Pinnochio enthusiasts. Regardless, Lies of P: Overture offers us the opportunity to witness the origin of its world of mechanical puppets and customisable weapons. Here’s hoping this does for the base game what The Old Hunters did for Bloodborne! It’s set to release summer of 2025.

Warriors Abyss Promises Infinite Musou

The Dynasty Warriors games typically have so many characters, weapons and moving parts that their fans could play them forever. But what if you actually could play it forever? Warriors Abyss reimagines the long-running series as a roguelike with randomly generated stages and items. I’ve heard mixed things so far, but if you’ve finished last month’s Dynasty Warriors: Origins (reportedly a series high point) and can’t get enough, I think you could do worse. Warriors Abyss was released after being announced during the State of Play.

Supermassive Goes To Space With Directive 8020

Since Until Dawn in 2015, Supermassive Games has developed interactive horror experiences in which the player’s decisions determine who lives and dies. Its newest title, Directive 8020, is its first science fiction release. As far as I can tell it’s a mash-up of Alien and The Thing featuring a creature that can take the form of any player character–fascinating! This is the first title Supermassive Games is set to release following (says Bloomberg) the departure of the studio’s co-founders and ninety employees. Its release is set for October 2nd.

Could Digimon Story Time Stranger Be The Ultimate Evolution Of Digimon?

While Pokémon stuck to the formula, Digimon spent the past decade-plus bouncing between raising sims, strategy games, fighting games and other experiments. Its best try so far has been the Cyber Sleuth games, which its fans claim not only outdid recent Pokémon titles but gave Atlus’s Persona series a run for its money. Now we have Digimon Story Time Stranger, an updated take on the Cyber Sleuth titles with better graphics and (hopefully) production values. As somebody who grew up watching Digimon Tamers on television, I’m hoping Time Stranger keeps the series relevant in this strange new era.

Chinese Developers Embrace Fantasy At State of Play

If the success of Black Myth: Wukong last year was any indication, Chinese developers are making a play for the AAA games space. Two of these developers were featured in PlayStation’s State of Play. One, Eclipse Glow Games, is making the post-apocalyptic fantasy adventure Tides of Annihilation. The other, UltiZeroGames, is making the revenge fantasy adventure Lost Soul Aside.

What I find most interesting here is how much these two games remind me of the later Final Fantasy titles; Tides of Annihilation’s characters and monsters remind me of XIII, while Lost Soul Aside is definitely playing in XV and XVI’s sandbox. Folks impressed by these titles should really be checking out indie games from China’s development scene like Hero’s Adventure: Road to Passion and Volcano Princess.

Two New Onimusha Titles Revive Heroes From the Past

Two new Onimusha games are set for release on the PlayStation 5. The first, a remaster of Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny, is set for release on May 23rd. The other, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, is still in development but expected in 2026. Capcom claimed that not only did it pick legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi as the hero of the game, but the Resident Evil publisher based his face on Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. (Musashi was also, strangely, the hero of Netflix’s Onimusha anime in 2023.) My favourite touch in this trailer is the talking Oni Gauntlet, which reminds me of the ring Eruba from the Garo tokusatsu franchise.

Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater’s Microsoft Release Teases Bomberman

Just when I thought I had Metal Gear Solid Delta pegged, a special trailer revealed that the Microsoft release of the game will differ from the Sony version in one key respect. Rather than Ape Escape, the game looks like it will feature the indomitable Bomberman. If you don’t know or remember who Bomberman is, I recommend checking out Marc Normandin’s “Celebrating 40 Years of Bomberman” feature. (Really, I wrote this news blurb just to trick startmenu’s readers into reading about Bomberman.)

Rip And Tear! Learn Doom Mapping With Dragonfly!

Dragonfly is one of the best-known new developers in the Doom modding space. Not only did he lead Eviternity and Eviternity 2, arguably the standard bearers for modern Doom wads, but he also designed levels for the commercial shooter Prodeus. Now you can learn all his secrets via “LEARN DOOM MAPPING!”, the first episode of his new series Mapping With Dragonfly. If you’re a novice mapper terrified of taking the plunge, you may be surprised just how accessible making maps is these days! 

After Journey’s End Is Now Three Volumes Deep

Anodyne 2 developer Melos Han-Tani published the third volume of After Journey’s End, a zine featuring essays from developers talking about making games. This instalment features Ben Drury (Northstar Courier), Conor Walsh (There Swings a Skull: Grim Tidings), Pablo Quarta (Atuel) and Loren Schmidt (Hole Digging Game.) I particularly like Schmidt’s essay, which compares the histories of games and embroidery.

IGN’s Rebekah Valentine Interviews Hideki Kamiya, Capcom and Machine Head about Okami 2

If you have a fond spot for Okami as I do, you may enjoy Rebekah Valentine’s long interview with Kamiya and representatives from Capcom and Machine Head regarding the upcoming Okami 2. Lots of great nuggets in here, including how the game came about, how long it might take to make, and whether production might be smoother than the first game.

Crytek Fires 15% Of Workforce, Puts Next Crysis On Hold

In a February 12th  tweet, the studio Crytek announced that “we must lay off an estimated 15% of our around 400 employees…after putting the development of the next Crysis game on hold in Q3 2024, we have been trying to shift developers over to Hunt: Showdown 1896.” While other studios have been burned trying their hands at running live service games (see Rocksteady and Suicide Squad) it’s fascinating that even relative success in this space can eat studios alive.

Robert Yang Announces New “Sportslike” Tryhard

Robert Yang is a multi-talented games developer and scholar who was in 2016 the third-most-banned developer on Twitch. Now his studio Grapefruit Games (which he runs together with Eddie Cameron) has a new “sportslike” on the way called Tryhard, a rugby game that blends tactical role-playing games, auto-battlers and the sports genre. The studio also published a “Sportslike Manifesto” which is worth reading by itself.

…And, Two New Translations

Path of the Abyss, one of the best indie dungeon crawlers available on Steam, recently received a proper English translation. While the game was previously available in English, the developers utilised a machine translation with the promise that it would commission a proper translation eventually. This is now the case, meaning that (despite some remaining UI rough edges) there’s now no reason to avoid playing this excellent game. Meanwhile, on RomHack Plaza, zander3312 released an English translation of the great (but tough) PlayStation action title The Adventure of Little Ralph.

Update Patch News Roundup (23/02/25)

It’s time once again for Update Patch, where we run through a selection of news from the ever-changing world of video games.

Viktor Antonov, Art Director of Half-Life 2, Passes Away

The artist Viktor Antonov passed away this February at the too-young age of 52. He is best known for his role in designing the look and feel of City 17 as art director of the beloved first-person shooter Half-Life 2. Later he served as visual designer at Arkane Studios for Dishonored. It’s fair to say from these two roles that Antonov was one of the most influential designers of cities in video games and (arguably) modern pop culture. At Rock Paper Shotgun, Edwin Evans-Thirwell called him “one of video gaming’s great urban fabulists,” which sounds just about right.

NetEase Shuts Down Marvel Rivals Seattle Team, Consolidates Studios

Earlier this week, the Seattle-based director of the popular live service game Marvel Rivals announced via LinkedIn that he and his team had been laid off by NetEase. Now a new Bloomberg report alleges that NetEase CEO William Ding is junking game studios across the company. Even Marvel Rivals, despite its later success, was reportedly almost cancelled because Ding preferred to prioritise characters his company owned rather than licensed characters.

It’s easy to be cynical about all this, considering recent angst in the games industry regarding how often developers are fired at the end of a project whether they succeed or fail. That said, Daniel Ahmad suggested via a piece for Niko Partners that the actions of Ding and his company have as much to do with the domestic consolidation of the Chinese games industry as they do with the wider industry’s health or the performance of NetEase foreign subsidiaries. He points to the international success of Black Myth: Wukong especially as an inflexion point; why buy up international talent to make games for you when cheaper, local studios can make their own titles?

Hades Voice Actor Marin Miller to Supergiant: Get to the Bargaining Table

Supergiant’s popular “godlike roguelike” Hades II announced a new update this week, The Warsong, which teased a “Final Confrontation” among other things. Normally this would qualify as a highlight on its own. Unfortunately, there was further news this week. Athena voice actor Marin M. Miller announced via Bluesky that they might be recast in the game “not because I stepped away from the character willingly,” but “because the employer refused to flip to an interim.” Supergiant then announced via Bluesky that “we have not re-cast any of our characters in Hades II, and wish to keep working with each and every member of our wonderful cast.”

Despite this, Supergiant’s message confirmed that “none of [their] games have ever been subject to SAG-AFTRA contracts for a variety of reasons…” Meanwhile, Miller warned that the studio has “ignored my requests to put them in touch with union reps for years,” and that “a game of HADES’ size and notoriety leaves me vulnerable to AI cloning outside of their ecosystem, and a non-union contact gives me no teeth to enforce it unless I have money.” 

Supergiant previously landed in hot water in 2021, when the studio came under fire for Hades’s uneven translation quality depending on language. Some fans claimed that the game had utilised unpaid community translators for these other localisations; the studio’s founder Greg Kasavin said to PC Gamer that these translators were in fact all paid for their labour, but “declined to reveal specifics of the contracts involved…”

Microsoft Claims Muse AI Model Is The Future Of Games, But Is It Really?

In a recent blog post, Microsoft announced its new AI model Muse, which it refers to as “the first World and Human Action Model (WHAM).” By feeding many hours of Ninja Theory’s 2020 game Bleeding Edge into the model, the company sought to generate consistent, diverse and persistent instances meant to represent outcomes of people playing the game. Microsoft Studios CEO Phil Spencer proposed this technology could assist in game preservation. AI researcher Mike Cook, though, thinks that claim is a bunch of baloney. I recommend reading his post on the subject for further information. You can also check out more information about Microsoft’s World and Human Action Model in a scholarly article for Nature published in coordination with this week’s press rollout.

Pokemon Presents Set For February 27th

The Pokémon Company has scheduled another Pokémon Presents for February 27th. Perhaps it’ll feature Pokémon Legends Z-A, the successor to 2022’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus. But what else? Perhaps Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket? Pokémon Unite? Pokémon Sleep? While I’ve been frustrated by the company’s managerial failures in the world of video games, there’s always a part of me that will root for Game Freak. Plus, The Pokémon Company’s anime branch is still cooking; check out the short “Angry Primeape Observation Diary” to see for yourself.

Niantic Inc. in Talks To Sell Games Division To Scopely Inc.

In other, stranger Pokémon news, Pokémon GO developers Niantic Inc. are set to meet with Scopely Inc. (per Bloomberg) to discuss selling its video game branch for $3.5 billion. Pokemon GO itself remains quite popular; when I visited Central Park last year in New York City, it was packed with GO fans hunting for exclusives. But Niantic’s other titles have been less successful, and many of them (like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite) were cancelled. More recently, Niantic has been utilising data harvested from its games (including Pokemon GO) to train a “Large Geospatial Model” it believes will become “the world’s future operating system.”

As a reminder, Scopely Inc. is now owned by Savvy Games Group, which is a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF,) which is headed by the country’s crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, whose government assassinated the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. 

Square Enix Ends Support For Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles On iOS

According to Square Enix, folks who bought the iOS version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles have been complaining that they cannot access additional content “due to changes made to the in-app purchases model.” Since the company’s representatives cannot figure out how to fix the bug, it is ending their support for the game and offering refunds to anybody who made in-app purchases on or after January 2024. While Crystal Chronicles is available on other platforms, it frustrates me that the constantly updating App Store continues to be such a precarious environment for games. Once a title no longer works within its larger infrastructure, that’s it.

A Blast From The Past! Samurai Pizza Cats Return

Blast Zero, formerly known as Tanuki Creative Studio, is developing a video game based on the beloved cartoon Samurai Pizza Cats. Wait a minute, you might say. Aren’t the cats in this game ninja rather than samurai? What’s going on? Well, dear reader, Samurai Pizza Cats was very loosely adapted from the anime series Kyatto Ninden Teyande. The staff chose to punch up the original with pop culture references and lots of goofy jokes. The new game, per Crunchyroll News, features much of the Japanese and English cast plus original Japanese scriptwriter Satoru Akahori. 

The Last Of Us Season 2 Will Premiere on April 13th 

The second season of The Last of Us, the HBO drama that proved once and for all that video game TV adaptations could earn good reviews, is set to premiere on April 13th. It will adapt some, but not all, of The Last of Us Part II. I’m curious to see how folks respond to this one given that a) Part II has a much thornier reputation than the first game, and b) the success of Fallout last year means that The Last of Us is no longer the only good game adaptation going. 

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Website Counts Down to March 4th Reveal

The website for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater now features a countdown set to culminate on March 4th 2025. Although we don’t know yet what this will be, it is very possible that it is set to reveal Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4. The studio Iron Galaxy, which co-developed the critically acclaimed remake Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 alongside Vicarious Visions, is listed on the webpage next to Activision. Vicarious Visions itself was merged into Blizzard Entertainment in 2022 to become Blizzard Albany.

Soul Of Sovereignty Sequel Scheduled For March 7

Comics artist Gigi D.G. announced via Bluesky that the second chapter of their visual novel Soul of Sovereignty is set for release on March 7. It will be released as an update to its predecessor Soul of Sovereignty: Prelude. Readers may recognise Gigi by their popular webcomic Cucumber Quest, their promotional and concept art for the video game Deltarune, or (perhaps) the Persona 4 comic they released under the name hiimdaisy. (I like their 2016 comic Lady of the Shard, personally.

Update Patch News Roundup (03/03/25)

It’s time once again for Update Patch, where we run through a selection of the week’s news from the ever-changing world of video games.

Pokémon Presents Teases City Adventures, Competitive Battles And Stop-Motion

The Pokémon Company released a Pokémon Presents video in honor of Pokémon Day, February 27 2025. The highlight was the trailer for the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A, perhaps Game Freak’s last big title for the Switch. While its predecessor Pokémon Legends: Arceus embraced Breath of the Wild-style natural landscapes, Z-A looks to be a city adventure. Whether Game Freak can measure up to urban RPGs that Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios has been creating with the Like a Dragon games, though, remains to be seen.

Two other announcements stood out to me in particular. The first was that new episodes of Pokémon Concierge, a stop-motion series produced by the excellent Dwarf Studios, are set to premiere this September. The second is that a new title, Pokémon Champions, is now being developed for both Switch and smartphones. Champions appears to be a spiritual successor to the Pokémon Stadium games for Nintendo 64; these days, it’s also competing directly with fan-made alternatives like Pokémon Showdown.

Warner Bros. Cancels Wonder Woman, Shutters Monolith Studios And Two Other Developers

Previously, Jason Schreier at Bloomberg reported that the Untitled Wonder Woman game developed by Monolith Studios under Warner Bros. was experiencing a difficult development cycle. Now, a new report confirms that Warner Bros. has not just cancelled that project but also shut down Monolith Studios as well as two other studios owned by the conglomerate; Player First Games (MultiVersus) and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. 

While Monolith Studios is best known today for its action adventure game Middle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor, the studio has a history stretching back three decades. Past titles include cult classic shooters Blood and F.E.A.R., ambitious MMO The Matrix Online and the critically beloved spy adventure No One Lives Forever. It’s shocking that a studio with that kind of back catalogue could be summarily executed without ceremony. But that’s just business as usual for Warner Bros. these days.

The Next Steam Next Fest

Steam is running its demo session Next Fest, until March 3rd. Assuming that this installment of Update Patch is published as scheduled on Sunday, March 2nd, you have just a day to go exploring through what’s available. A few titles I’m personally curious about: the “cozy” burnout simulator Wanderstop, bumpslash revolution advocate Angeline Era and the Hades-meets-Hi-Fi Rush roguelike Kill the Music. 

The Werehog Lives! Unleashed Recompiled

In case you ever doubted that fans of Sonic the Hedgehog are truly built different: a team of developers released Unleashed Recompiled, an unofficial PC port of the Xbox 360 title Sonic Unleashed. The port utilises static recompilation (inspired by N64: Recompiled) to translate “the game's original PowerPC code and Xenos shaders into compatible C++ and HLSL code,” per the GitHub page. It’s a remarkable effort. Even better, it could very well be a step towards porting other forgotten 360 titles like Lost Odyssey or Phantom Dust.

Electronic Arts Release Command & Conquer Source Code To Community

In a rare instance of good news for the games industry, Electronic Arts (per Rock Paper Shotgun) released the source code for several games in the Command & Conquer real time strategy series. These include Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, Command & Conquer: Red Alert and Command & Conquer Generals, among others. EA also implemented Steam Workshop support for several titles including Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 and Command & Conquer: Kane’s Wrath. Rock Paper Shotgun says that the company commissioned modder Luke “CCHyper” Feenan to repair the source code for these titles in preparation for release.

Command & Conquer has an extensive modding scene that has kept the series relevant in the years following its 90s-2000s heyday. With luck, the publication of the source code will see a further blossoming of the fan community.

AQUAPLUS Remakes Influential Visual Novel ToHeart, With English Translation On The Way

A remake of the romantic visual novel ToHeart, originally published in May 1997, is scheduled for release this June. ToHeart was developed by Leaf (now AQUAPLUS,) a studio that set the standard in the 90s for how visual novels would look and play. The game also inspired a strong fan following that was influential in its own right. (For further information, I recommend watching this video by Bowl of Lentils.) This is the first time that ToHeart will be available in English.

It’s Time To Find The Key We’ve Lost: Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition

Nintendo released an Overview Trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, which remakes the mech-based science fiction RPG that was originally released in 2015 on the Wii U. The Definitive Edition is scheduled for release on March 30th.

The original Xenoblade Chronicles X was a contradictory but fascinating game. Originally envisioned as a multiplayer title in the vein of Monster Hunter, it ended up veering back towards the single player-centric franchise status quo. Despite its fragmentary story and rudimentary character models, Xenoblade Chronicles X was unique in how it evoked scale through contrast; characters experience the world completely differently whether they were exploring by foot or piloting giant mechanical Skells.

A new storyline unique to the Definitive Edition teases a connection to the team’s previous title Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Meanwhile, composers Hiroyuki Sawano and Misaki Umase are on tap to provide additional music.

MercurySteam Announces Blades of Fire

Metroid Dread developer MercurySteam teased a new game just a few weeks ago. Now we know what it is: Blades of Fire, an action game scheduled for release this May. You play as a man who fights with steel in a world where an evil Queen’s spell transforms people’s weapons into stone. There’s reportedly an emphasis on forging weapons to the player’s specifications via modifiers. 

The game is reminiscent of the studio’s earlier Castlevania: Lords of Shadow titles for the PS3 and Xbox 360. That said, as much influence as the game clearly borrows from others of its ilk, it clearly takes place in a setting that the developers themselves have created. Certainly MercurySteam has a lot to prove with this title; I’m personally most curious about just how granular the weapon creation is.

shmuplations Translates Sonic Adventure, Double Dash, Pinball Interviews

If you’re a fan of Japanese video games from the 80s and 90s, shmuplations is one of the greatest online repositories of translated interviews there is. The site recently published translations of interviews with the teams behind Sonic Adventure and Mario Kart: Double Dash. If you ever wanted to learn more about these titles, now’s your chance! A third interview, which collates discussions with various developers of Japanese digital pinball games, teases “the beginning of a series we will be continuing over the coming months.”

…And Two New Fan Translations

Over at RomHack Plaza, ChapuTranslations (who previously translated Welcome House 2: Keaton and His Uncle) announced a new English translation of the PlayStation RPG Prisoner. While it’s an obscure title even compared to recently translated works like Linda³ and Ancient Roman, Prisoner was (says Bowl of Lentils) developed by the imaginative designer/writer Shojiro Endo at Feycraft. The translator suggests that “the story is superb” and “it’s a game that deserves more recognition.” I’m certainly curious.

Meanwhile, RndStranger resurrected an old mail-in RPG from the pages of Marukatsu PC Engine, Lord of the Crystal, as an hour long experience you can play through via YouTube. Now you too can live the life of an adventurer, character sheet in hand.