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Detective Pikachu was packed with Easter eggs and Pokemon references – including 95 Pokemon we spotted in the movie. Did you catch them all?

Ubisoft’s latest big release, The Division 2, did not meet Ubisoft’s commercial expectations on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The French publisher confirmed on an earnings call today that the console edition failed to meet sales targets, but sales of the PC edition were in line with Division 1.

“The Division 2 ended up short of our ambitious expectations on console. We believe this was due in large part to a more competitive market than expected,” chief financial boss Frederick Dugue said, though he did not name any specific competitor titles.

Dugue added that he expects The Division 2 to “grow and gain traction” over time with new content releases such as the game’s first big raid coming this week. He also noted that while The Division 2 did not meet sales expectations, the game was received very positively by fans.

For the PC edition specifically, sales on Ubisoft’s own Uplay store surged 10 times compared to the original The Division. This was no doubt in part attributable to how The Division 2 was not released on Steam, in favor of coming to Uplay and the Epic Games Store.

Though The Division 2 did not reach Ubisoft’s commercial expectations on console, the game did hit “records highs for engagement per player,” while Season Pass sales were also strong.

Ubisoft never said what its sales expectations for The Division 2 were in the first place. Like most other major publishers, Ubisoft no longer typically releases sales expectations or results on a unit basis. That being said, Ubisoft did say that Far Cry 5 remains Ubisoft’s best-selling game on the current generation of consoles.

Also during Ubisoft’s earnings call today, the company announced yet another delay for the pirate game Skull & Bones and that it has three unannounced games in the works to be announced soon, one of which is rumored to be a London-set Watch Dogs 3.

Well, it looks like playing Mario is an esport now. At the end of Nintendo’s Super Mario Maker 2 Direct, the company announced a tournament will be held on June 8.

The 2019 Super Mario Maker 2 Invitational falls on the same day of some of Nintendo’s other E3 2019 plans. Already, Nintendo is hosting the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate World Championship 2019 3v3 tournament and the Splatoon 2 World Championship 2019 tournament on June 8. In a press release, Nintendo said the Super Mario Maker 2 Invitation will have “four members of the Super Mario Maker community [compete] in a variety of wild and unpredictable Super Mario Maker 2 courses designed by Nintendo’s Treehouse team.”

Super Mario Maker 2 launches as a Nintendo Switch exclusive on June 28. Though the game plays similarly to its predecessor, its inclusion of new modes and items makes for a much more varied experience.

The rest of Nintendo’s E3 2019 plans are more traditional. The company plans on airing a pre-recorded Nintendo Direct on Tuesday, June 11 at 9:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM ET / 5:00 PM BST. Nintendo hasn’t announced what exactly will be discussed during the Direct, only that it will cover some of the Switch games coming out in 2019. After the Direct, Nintendo will also air its traditional Treehouse livestream, which will most likely reveal a few more announcements. Nintendo plans on continuing with Treehouse livestreams throughout E3 week.

Given what we already know, we can hazard a guess as to what Nintendo plans on talking about during E3. As both Super Mario Maker 2 and Fire Emblem: Three Houses are scheduled to release in the weeks following E3, there’s a chance Nintendo might reveal one more trailer for each. At the very least, Nintendo will most likely have both on hand for attendees to play. It’s very likely Nintendo’s E3 Direct will focus on Pokémon Sword / Shield or Animal Crossing (or both), as both games are a part of Nintendo’s major Switch line-up for 2019. Given Retro Studios’ announcement that development on Metroid Prime 4 has restarted completely, the game is unlikely to be a focus of Nintendo’s E3 Direct this year.

The ’80s were a strange time for superhero comics. The era of the “extreme” exploded onto the scene and brought with it no shortage of immediately recognizable trends and tropes–holofoil variant covers, grimacing gun-toting anti-heroes, way too many utility pouches–you name it. For better or worse, ’80s comics had it all.

By and large, the weirdness and the turmoil of the ’80s is something modern comics now deal with at arm’s length. In Marvel, this is accomplished by the use of the sliding timeline. How it works is pretty simple: At any given point, it’s understood that the stories themselves to only have existed for 10 years or so–which means the stories of the ’80s are now readily cherry-picked for only the most pertinent details, rather than looked at as real-time artifacts. Those details are then reworked so that they fit into whatever modern setting they’re needed, or stripped of major contextual clues to make him stick out a little less obviously. The stories may have happened, but they happened differently, in a different era, or a different universe altogether.

Unless, of course, confronting the history of a character in real-time is the goal–which just so happens to be the case with Chip Zdarksy and Mark Bagley’s Spider-Man: Life Story, a limited series which tackles the decade-by-decade publication history of everyone’s favorite webhead one issue at a time. Starting with the ’60s, Life Story has taken Peter Parker in ten-year chunks through this week’s issue #3, which lands squarely in–you guessed it–the ’80s, allowing him not only to age but to progress through his own history in as close to “real time” as possible.

For Peter Parker, the ’80s were a time of (somewhat literal) transformation. It sent him to fight on Battleworld during the first iteration of Secret Wars, it introduced the black alien suit that would go on to become Venom, and it pitted him against a near brush with death as he faced off against Kraven the Hunter in what would ultimately become one of his most iconic stories, Kraven’s Last Hunt. These things still impact modern day Peter Parker in one way or another, but as the timeline slides away, so does their potency.

Life Story gives us a chance to revisit these moments with fresh eyes and a completely new context. Set outside of the main Marvel universe, the sliding timeline doesn’t hold sway here. In issue #1, Peter was a teenager in the ’60s, with #2 he was in his twenties in the ’70s; now, here in the ’80s, he’s rounding out his thirties. He’s facing off against the wild, pulp fiction weirdness of Battleworld and Secret Wars as he exits his prime and deals with his aging aunt and pregnant wife. He discovers the truth of the symbiotic black suit not because of a lucky accident but because he’s a scientist who deduced the truth almost right away–and chose not to worry about it because it gave him an opportunity to perform the way he had back in his youth. His confrontation with Kraven is now colored with the trappings of the last days of the Cold War, merged elegantly into the burgeoning symbiote storyline–which was published nearly four years prior.

By conducting a total remix of Spider-Man history and applying Life Story’s new set of rules, Zdarsky and Bagley figured out a new, even more devious origin story for one of Marvel’s fan-favorite anti-heroes. In this version of events, Eddie Brock’s weirdly contrived photography beef with Peter no longer exists. Instead, it piggybacks directly onto Kraven’s Last Hunt.

Kraven impersonates the black-suit wearing Spider-Man himself and “kills” Peter–but instead of tranquilizing him and burying him alive as he did in the original version of the story, Kraven both shoots and stabs him, literally murdering him until the symbiote finds and revives Peter from his grave. In full Venom mode, Peter attacks and defeats Kraven who readily accepts the loss, believing that his “Venomized” form is exactly what Peter always meant to be.

Then, in a revisit of what might be one of the darkest moments in Spider-Man history, the defeated Kraven prepares to commit suicide–something he successfully accomplished back in the original story (it was extremely bleak, trust me.) Only this time, he’s ambiguously interrupted by the oozing tendril of a symbiote, implying that in this version, it’s a suicidal Kraven who ends up being Venom’s first host outside of Peter himself.

The potential here for new twists and turns in Peter’s story is massive. Not only is Kraven a trained killer and relentless psychopath; he’s also one of Spider-Man’s greatest enemies just on his own–without the help of an alien symbiote’s enhancement. Add to that the fact that both Kraven and Venom are notoriously obsessed with Spider-Man and you have all the ingredients for an explosive catastrophe just around the corner.

Spider-Man: Life Story continues with issue #4 next month, tackling the 90s and, with any luck, all the fall out of this massive revelation.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is partnering with the University of Tokyo to launch Gunpla models into space for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Yes, during the 2020 Olympic Games, Gundam models are going to be watching over the athletes, transmitting supportive messages to the competitors as they orbit Earth.

“One small step for man, one giant leap for [the Tokyo 2020 Olympics]!” the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games tweeted. “We’ve partnered with the [University of Tokyo] and JAXA to launch the ‘G-SATELLITE Go to Space’ project. Carrying Gundam, this is the first time a satellite commissioned for the [Olympic Games] will orbit the earth!”

According to Anime News Network, the satellite is scheduled to launch between March and April 2020 from the International Space Station’s Japanese Experiment Module, and it will transmit messages back to Earth. The satellite will hold two models–an RX-78-2 Gundam and MS-06S Char’s Zaku II. Both will be painted and made with special materials designed to withstand space, and their eyes will change between the five colors used in the rings symbolizing the Olympic Games. Cameras in the satellite will showcase the models’ journey into orbit and continue to capture the two’s space adventures.

Gundam is one of the most recognizable parts of Japanese culture, as the franchise includes multiple TV series, movies, manga, novels, and video games, the earliest of which date back to April 1979. The franchise’s impact is so large, it’s influenced science fiction across the globe.

In collaboration with Sunrise–the animation studio responsible for the Gundam anime–Legendary Pictures is creating a live-action Gundam movie. Brian K. Vaughan, who penned several Lost episodes and numerous Marvel and DC comic books and graphic novels, is both writing the movie’s screenplay and serving as executive producer. A release date for the movie has not been announced yet.

See the other companies and games skipping E3 2019.

BEYOND!

On this week’s episode of IGN’s weekly PlayStation show, host Jonathon Dornbush is joined by Max Scoville and Brian Altano to discuss how PlayStation can control the conversation at E3 despite not attending this year’s show with a press conference or showfloor booth.

Plus, they discuss what could be happening for Ubisoft in the next year, read a hilarious Memory Card story, and more!

Timecodes:

• 00:11 – Jonathon talks about Carly Rae Jepsen for a minute (I’m sorry)
• 1:38 – Beyond 600 discussion!

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You can expect to see Super Mario Maker 2 at E3 2019.

Super Mario Maker 2 will feature a brand-new story mode and a co-op creation mode that will allow two players to build levels together.

Revealed in a 15-minute Nintendo Direct, Super Mario Maker 2 will also feature online multiplayer with up to 4 players as Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Toadette.

Players will be able to play alongside their friends in the Multiplayer Co-op mode where all will work together and when one player reaches the finish line, all will finish and beat the level.

However, Multiplayer Versus mode will also be available and will pit four players against each other on randomly selected courses and will encourage players to get better as a Versus Rating will keep track of your wins and your loses.

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Warning: spoilers for Batman #71 and all preceding issues!

The Rebirth era of Batman follows one, long master plan orchestrated by one of Batman’s most iconic and imposing foes, Bane. Seventy-one issues have been released as of this writing, meaning we’re almost to the end of writer Tom King’s 100-issue run. With Bane’s plan being rather long, complex and multi-layered, we asked King himself to break it all down and explain how all the hidden clues are setting up what’s to come.

Before we get to the particulars, it’s important to understand Bane’s end goal.

“It’s that ultimate Bane moment which is to lift someone above your head and crack them on your knee. That’s what Bane’s move is. So this is what he’s done to Batman for 75 issues. The first 50 issues, he lifted Batman above his head. He got Batman to the happiest place he’s ever been. He got Batman to be this close to feeling the joy he felt before he was 10 years old, before that alley. In Issue 50 through 75 he brought it down. In issue 74, which is what we’re leading to now, ‘The Fall and the Fallen,’ is where the back hits the knee and you hear the crack. So

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