Month: September 2020

While Donkey Kong Country has been re-released many times, Donkey Kong Country 2–which many view as the best game in the SNES DKC trilogy–is harder to get your hands on these days. But for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, that’s about to change–the Diddy-centric sequel headlines a strong September line-up of retro games.

On September 23, four new games will be added to Nintendo Switch Online. Here’s the full list.

SNES

• Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
• Mario’s Super Picross
• The Peace Keepers

NES

• S.C.A.T: Special Cybernetic Attack Team

In DKC 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (like conquest, get it?), Diddy teams up with Dixie Kong, whose helicopter spin ability lets her float short distances, to rescue Donkey Kong from Kaptain K. Rool. There’s a lot of pirate theming going on in this classic from Rare, and the game’s levels are tough but fair. It’s a true classic–one of the SNES’s best games.

Mario’s Super Picross will be a welcome addition for picross fans, and it features two-person multiplayer, too. The game has actually never been released in the US, and if you’re not familiar with picross, you might struggle–but thankfully, Nintendo has released a helpful instructional video for how to get started and how to play.

The Peace Keepers is a scrolling beat ’em up, with character-specific super attacks and a story that changes depending on your choices. It’s part of a loose trilogy of games, following Rival Turf and Brawl Brothers.

The lone NES entry, S.C.A.T., is a challenging action shooter set in the year 2029 (which used to be the far-flung future). You need to take down an alien menace, and it looks pretty fun.

If you’ve downloaded the Japanese Super Famicom collection from the Japanese Eshop, you can access a new SNES Fire Emblem title. Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem will be added to the SNES collection in Japan.

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Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts’ new game, Star Citizen, was announced back in 2012, and–though parts of the game have been released–fans are still waiting for the final product. Roberts has now written an in-depth forum post that seeks to address concerns about the game’s development status and why the project is taking so long.

“This is the game I’ve dreamed of my whole life. Now I am in a position to realize it, I am not willing to compromise it’s potential because it is taking longer than I originally envisioned,” Roberts said. “What I will commit to, and what is an internal priority is to improve the current gameplay and quality of life as we go, as Star Citizen is already fun in many ways, even if more buggy and not as stable as I would like, and just finishing off and polishing the basics will make it play as well or better than most other games.”

Roberts went on to say that the gameplay elements for Star Citizen is “not a pipe dream,” and he doesn’t expect it to take 10-20 years to deliver. “I described systems we either have working, or are working on; we’ve even shown early versions of some of this like fire on Inside Star Citizen. I can’t promise you exactly what quarter it will come together but once the new Road Map web work is done you’ll be able to see the teams progress to achieving what I describe in real time,” he said.

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Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has been a huge success, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. In a feature interview with PC Gamer, Paul Croft, founder of developer Mediatonic, has spoken about the team’s history–and the many, many games that led up to Fall Guys.

As PC Gamer points out, Mediatonic had worked on about 130 games before Fall Guys, including many web and flash games–here’s an incomplete list. In fact, it’s not even the first game the studio released in 2020–that would be picross narrative game Murder By Numbers. Other games they’ve worked on include Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess, Foul Play, Hatoful Boyfriend, Gears Pop!, Fable Fortune. The studio has also worked with Disney, Nickelodeon, Sega, Adult Swim, and other companies on major brands.

Croft talks about the studio’s first big success, 2008’s Amateur Surgeon–which was, on some level, much bigger than even Fall Guys. “That was a sort of huge moment for us,” Croft says. “It exploded online with 100 million players and that was a sort of turning point for us in terms of moving towards creating our own games as opposed to creating or porting games for brands.”

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We got our hands on FIFA 21 and scored on the pitch with several different teams. Here’s some of our favorite goals from the beta.

Greg and Meg break down the plot and references in Episode 5, “Strange Case”

South Park is returning for a 24th season, but ahead of that, Comedy Central will air a one-hour episode focused on, you guessed it, the pandemic. The episode is called “The Pandemic Special,” and it debuts on September 30.

In this episode, Randy capitalizes on people staying at home and smoking more weed than ever, while kids are heading back to school to find it to be a very different place. Here is the full description for the episode:

“Randy comes to terms with his role in the COVID-19 outbreak as the ongoing pandemic presents continued challenges to the citizens of South Park. The kids happily head back to school but nothing resembles the normal that they once knew; not their teachers, not their homeroom, not even Eric Cartman.”

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A new trailer for The Crown Tundra, the second part of the Pokemon Sword / Shield expansion pass, has emerged. Interestingly, it comes from Nintendo South Africa, and hasn’t been posted by the US Nintendo YouTube account.

The trailer, though brief, squeezes in several Pokemon and gives us a preview of some of the expansions’s new environments.

It also shows off Regice, Registeel, and Regirock, just three of many returning Legendary Pokemon coming in the expansion. These are three Legendary Pokemon that were first introduced in Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire, and finding them required readers to read and translate braille. Whether this will be the case for Sword/Shield remains to be seen.

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A new Tracer event is now live in Overwatch on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. From now until September 28, you can earn a new Tracer skin and more by participating in matches.

Titled Tracer’s Comic Challenge, the event gives you two weeks to earn a total of nine rewards. Winning three matches in Competitive Play, Arcade, or Quick Play nets you a player icon. Similarly, six wins in either mode rewards you with a spray, and nine wins gets you the epic Comic Book Tracer skin.

In addition to playing the game to get new rewards, you can watch any Overwatch match on Twitch to earn additional cosmetics in two-hour increments. This means if you watch for two hours, you’ll get one new spray. Watch for four hours and you’ll get two sprays, and you’ll get three sprays if you watch Overwatch games on Twitch for six hours. You can check out the rewards below.

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While Seasons 1 and 2 of Cobra Kai recently landed on Netflix after originally airing on YouTube Premium, we’re still a ways off from getting Season 3 of the Karate Kid followup show. Cobra Kai Season 3 won’t be arriving to Netflix until 2021. However, in a recent interview with Conan O’Brian on TBS’s Conan, Cobra Kai star Ralph Macchio revealed a few details about next season.

Season 3 will see Daniel LaRusso return to Okinawa, Japan–something that was revealed at Comic-Con in 2019. In the interview, which you can see below, Macchio discusses the choice and what it means.

However, what the former All Valley Karate champion is doing there is still a mystery. “I have been to Okinawa, for some shooting of Cobra Kai season three, which I cannot talk too much about,” Macchio said in the interview. “But I can say it dives into the origin of Miyagi Do Karate. We learn a little bit, some secrets of past history that is new to the audience, and to LaRusso, my character, and we actually went to Okinawa to shoot.”

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