Month: March 2021

Animal Crossing: New Horizons fans are always expressing their creativity through the game’s building mechanics, and they can sometimes achieve goals that seem impossible to casual players. That is definitely the case with Twitter user doom_mori, who managed to create a Mario-like platformer experience on their island using the themed items added for Mario’s 35th anniversary by a recent update.

While parts of this build are not possible without hacking the game–which we don’t recommend, as it can get your island’s Dream Address taken down, among other consequences–it’s still incredibly impressive. Especially lucky is the fact that the warp pipes work in the order they intended; the direction you exit a warp pipe is random, and if you have more than two on your island at a time, the connection between pipes is random, too. The Super Mario Sunshine music also adds a bit of atmosphere to the clip.

In other Animal Crossing news, an enthusiastic fan recently recreated the first act of the megahit musical Hamilton in New Horizons, and it’s quite elaborate. An upcoming update for the game will add Sanrio-inspired villagers and items to the game, and that’s set to release later in March.

Square Enix has shared more details on Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, including story info on the Yuffie DLC episode. The company also outlined some of its enhancements and new features for the PS5 port.

The Japanese publication Game Watch (translated via Gematsu) explains the background of Yuffie and her partner, the new character Sonon. The two are elite operatives for Wutai, and are dispatched to Midgar to steal the “Ultimate Materia” from the Shinra company. Yuffie herself is a ninja who uses a shuriken weapon. Yuffie is the commanding officer to Sonon, though he’s older, and he is said to have trained under Yuffie’s father.

The new episode starring the pair will take place over two chapters: first as the two hook up with Avalanche, and then the Shinra heist attempt. Yuffie has both short- and long-range combat capabilities, and she can perform special contextual actions like breaking Shinra boxes and crossing a wire fence.

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A new patch is available now for the hit Norse multiplayer game Valheim. Among a handful of smaller changes, it makes a big change for dedicated servers and also tweaks the game balance so wolves are less horny.

Starting with the dedicated servers, this new update makes it so dedicated servers now always use direct connections instead of using the Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) system.

“This should result in much lower latency for most players,” developer Iron Gate said. “I really hope this patch solves a lot of connection issues introduced in last weeks patches (due to switching socket backend),” the studio said.

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Peacock has ordered the science series The End is Nye, hosted and co-executive produced by pre-eminent science guy, Bill Nye. According to a release, each episode will dive into the mystery and reality of both natural and unnatural threats, “from viruses to volcanoes, asteroids to authoritarianism, and climate change to chemical warfare.”

The show, the release promises, is intended to explore “worldwide catastrophes” and their ability to provide both “thrills, but also hope and a way forward… The End is Nye offers a scientific blueprint for surviving anything that comes our way.” No release date has yet been announced, nor has it been disclosed how many episodes of the new series will be in the works. Previously, Nye’s Bill Nye Saves the World ran for three seasons on Netflix.

Brannon Braga (Cosmos: Possible Worlds, Star Trek) will serve as showrunner, director, and co-executive producer of all episodes. Fuzzy Door Production’s Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) and president Eric Huggins will round out the co-executive production duties. The series is coming about via Fuzzy Door’s current overall deal with NBCUniversal.

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Microsoft has revealed a brand-new platform for its future of augmented and mixed reality development named Mesh. Microsoft Mesh will enable users to truly experience shared virtual spaces with holograms.

At Microsoft Ignite, the company unveiled its vision of the future for HoloLens 2 and the devices that succeed it, where users will be able to occupy shared virtual spaces and interact with holograms that are persistent between users. This means being able to toss a key, for example, from your hand to that of another participant, something which was demonstrated by guest James Cameron (director of Avatar) and Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberté.

Mesh looks like an extension of the work Microsoft has done with HoloLens 2, seeking to expand its collaborative possibilities that have already been useful in numerous enterprise applications. For games, however, it still seems rooted in proof of concept. Much like the old Minecraft HoloLens demo from E3, Microsoft only briefly touched on gaming with a demo of Pokémon Go. The game wasn’t running natively on HoloLens or Mesh but presented the idea of being able to walk in a park, feed a Pikachu, and engage in trainer battles within a shared virtual environment.

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