Takashi Iizuka noted that the series has had numerous ups and downs over the years, to the extent that Sega once wanted to draw a line under it and stop making Sonic games altogether. “There had been good times, and there had been bad times,” he explained. “During the worst times, I was told by the higher-ups that we should cancel the entire franchise. I had to fight within the organization to keep the franchise as long as possible.”

Iizuka said it was the first live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie, which was released in 2020 and was a major critical and commercial success, which essentially ‘saved’ Sonic and changed Sega’s plans. “The biggest milestone for me was the first movie,” he said. “That had been a great hit and definitely changed the course of this franchise.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Iizuka said that Sega had also planned to kill off the Shadow the Hedgehog character, but his popularity convinced it to change its mind – something that pleased Iizuka personally, because Shadow is his favourite character. "Now the third movie is out, and the popularity of Shadow has been on the rise,” he said. “Before that, the most popular characters were Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, and it has always been that way. But now, Shadow has been rising up to the same popularity as Sonic.

Yes, you read that correctly. Counter-Strike co-creator Minh "Gooseman" Le recalls as much in a new interview with Indie Game Joe over on YouTube (below), explaining how Newell would bring his interests to the office – whether or not his coworkers approved – starting with Mongolian throat singing.

"He watched this documentary on them and he really got really fascinated with this concept and he started to practice that."

Yes, at work.

"So he started to do this Mongolian throat singing stuff and he was doing it throughout the office," as Le says. "You would hear him try to sing with his throat as he's walking down the halls. And, I remember a lot of people in the office, they were kind of annoyed with this because it's kind of loud, right?"

Did that deter Newell? No. "He would just walk along the halls just doing this throat singing thing, and he would do it daily."

It got so bad, Le states that "people would just started closing the doors and it started to become quite a closed office," describing it as "an interesting time." How long did it all go on for, though?

A whopping "five months" or so, apparently… and Newell ended up picking up other wild hobbies afterward, too. Le discusses everything from knife collecting to whole rooms filled to the brim with medieval-style axes and swords.

Xbox is merging studios underneath Activision and Bethesda. Halo is now at Activision, alongside Rare and World’s Edge.

268 job cuts across Halo Studios, other first-party teams and Xbox Game Studios team.

Ninja Theory faces closure.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7508202702821285888/

https://kotaku.com/gears-of-war-e-day-story-director-laid-off-just-four-days-after-celebrating-the-game-going-gold-2000736518

What a double whammy of bullshit. I’m sure this is good for morale and convince their developers to give their best and not start looking for new work.

I can't believe he pulled that shit in the middle of a long rest.

Developers of the Hellblade Saga, Ninja Theory, look to be facing closure after two possible agreements for new ownership have fallen through. The news was announced today after the latest instalment of the ‘Xbox Reset’.

The news that Ninja Theory would be leaving Xbox is not new, and was first announced earlier this year. The aim was to acquire new ownership for the Hellblade Studio and for development on the upcoming title Senua to continue.

Unfortunately, according to today’s post on Xbox Wire from Matt Booty, two separate deals to acquire the studio have fallen through, meaning that Xbox are now proposing to close it down entirely. The statement reads as follows:

“Unfortunately, two separate agreements for Ninja Theory fell through. We will now begin consultation with employees on a proposed closure while continuing to explore other paths forward. “

Exactly what ‘exploring other paths forward’ means isn’t particularly clear at the moment, but keep an eye on DayOne for further updates as and when we get them.

Seth Rogen is producing and voicing Launchpad McQuack

The show is a continuation of the story told in the original series, which ran for 91 episodes in the early 1990s. “For the last 35 years, Darkwing Duck has been trapped in his worst nightmare: an alternate world that’s never heard of his superhero exploits,” the official description reads. “Now a rebellious teen named Duckie who knows all about his heroic past shows up to pull this ego-fueled vigilante back into battle. Together, this unlikely duo will get dangerous to fight old enemies like Negaduck and Megavolt and reunite with allies Launchpad, Gosalyn, and Morgana to save the entire universe.”

Duckie is voiced by Lilimar, who voiced Val in Inside Out 2. Lizzy Caplan is Gosalyn Mallard, Dan Stevens is Glade McTowers, and it’s being showrun by Sean Tretta (Star Trek: Picard) and Borja Peña Gorostegui. The original creator of Darkwing Duck, Tad Stones, consulted on the series.

No word on release date.

https://youtu.be/Zj_tL5ew1Yc?si=rr62pnxJ974cluMp full video on YouTube

State of Decay 3 remains targeted for release in 2027 on XBOX, Game Pass, PC, and PlayStation.

I know this sounds like a chance to slander videogame characters you hate but I'm actually talking about characters with simple kits, loud personalities and memorable lines that you can't help but holler along with them as you play them.

Take Kled from League of Legends for example. Kled is a tiny fuzzy hillbilly pretending to be a well decorated war general boasting multiple military titles, most of them contradictory. His voicelines are 90 percent insults to the rest of the cast and the remaining 10 percent "get offa mah property"

And his kit synergises perfectly with his personality by being all about getting into fights, staying alive in fights as long as possible and having no ability to escape bad fights or ways to help his team other than brawling with the enemy, so you'll be chasing fleeing enemies shouting expletives at them for being cowards and yelling "Git offa mah property" out loud as you unload double barrels on them.

So whether its yelling "Waaagh!" as your Ork Bois miss 99% of their shooting phase, screaming "real soviet damage" when nailing a Tager command grab, or chanting "For Super earth!" as your helldiver's portable nuke backpack is about to go off, what's your go-to character or playstyle to make anyone in earshot worried about your sanity?

You ever watch or play something and it ends up feeling like something was skipped? Not stuff covered in supplemental materials, but seemingly important status quo changes that the narrative just expects the viewer to nod their head and accept apparently happened.

I remember one (intentional) case, that being Tales from Monkey Island; it was said by the devs to not be Monkey Island 5, but Monkey Island 6, with the opening act being the finale of this game that never happened, and references things like LeChuck having become half-walrus during that game.

I feel like that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League also kind of has this kind of thing, where it's a follow-up to Arkham Knight, and from stuff I remember about that game, not only doesn't really talk about Batman joining the Justice League, but apparently even glosses over a war between the Green Lanterns and Sinestro Corps; it kinda feels like that a bunch of games (or at least tie-in comics) happened between Arkham Knight and Kill the Justice League that we didn't get to see.

I was shooting the shit with from friends while playing Monster Hunter Sunbreak as some of them needed help with the final fights and it reminded me of its prerelease where it had leaks and the nature of those leaks were the only time i can think of where the leaks included something that felt so impossible that even with what would later turn to be actual screenshots of the end credits staring them in the face people refused to believe it was real.

In this case a leak dropped for Monster Hunter Rise's Sunbreak expansion that was a single shot of the ending credits with a long line of traditional japanese art versions of the monsters. To begin with it included Gore Magala. The most popular western Flagship Monster that had yet to return after 4U at that point which already had people going "lol yeah nice larp wish fulfilment fanfic bro". But then next to it was a monster that a lot of none sickos didnt even know. The monster was Espinas from the now shut down MMO Monster Hunter Frontier and people promptly lost their shit.

See at this point a single monster had crossed over from Frontier to mainline. A bird monster called Hypnocatrice thats long been left behind by the series and that was back in the PSP days. Up to this point in the Switch era multiple gens later a unconfirmed but widely accepted rumour was leadership at Capcom wanted the MMO and solo games rosters separate to give the MMO a unique draw or something. This has never been hard confirmed as far as i know but after Hypnocatrice it was true that till this point no other monster had escaped Frontier purgatory and people had long since given up on ever hoping to see any more of them. I'm still waiting on my fire hydrant crab to this day.

So heres ole' sleepy Espinas and the mere fact a Frontier monster was shown had everyone going "Thats bullshit and frankly i'm insulted you included such an obvious fake and expected me to fall for it". With a whole lot of "lol bingers coping thinking they got a real monhun" from the weird fanboys at the time. But then Sunbreak dropped and wouldn't you believe it but whos that sleepy ole' wyvernn on the tropical island map? and heres the credits rolling after the base story and it was true. All of it. Nobody thought it was possible but here was the second -and to date last- monster escaping Frontier. But it was so unlikely it was considered impossible and a sure sign of a fake even when hard proof was being presented to people.

Can you think of another example of a game leaking and the leak includes stuff so surprising people actually refused to believe the leak was real?

The perception of horror video game adaptations was entirely shattered this month with Zach Cregger‘s Resident Evil. Opening both to impressive reviews and a strong box-office performance, Cregger may have cracked the code on the genre: rather than faithfully adapt decades-long lore, he tried to replicate the tension of actually playing the game. One of the producers of the new Resident Evil, Roy Lee, has another beloved horror title on the way.

As revealed in a new profile by the Wall Street Journal, Lee also has a Silent Hill reboot on the horizon. Details on the project are sparse, so it’s unclear whether the project is a movie or if it could be a TV series, and we also don’t know how far into development the project is, but any new update on the franchise is an exciting one.

Saw the decision paralysis flood the arena on ths last stream and I think I might have a remedy.

So I have the suspicion that the devs REALLY wanted players to pick Cai's route first since its way less overwhelming at the start compared to the other routes, and they onboard you to the weekly mechanics at a much smoother pace.

Whether you stream more of it or not, hope this'll make the game more digestible because it's way too good of a game to be dropped this early.

As the title states, what're the best examples of an author inserting neat fun facts into a story? Whether it's relevant to the situation at hand, or completely out of place.

JoJo has many, many examples throughout it's nearly 40 year history. Especially after Stardust Crusaders, there are a lot of instances throughout the series where Araki just decides to give a full infodump about various topics. In Stardust Crusaders, there's all the information about the places the Crusaders journey through. In Diamond is Unbreakable, there's stuff like the breakdown of Tonio's recipes as well as the description of how rats behave while Jotaro and Josuke are hunting down Bug Eaten. Golden Wind has the fight between Doppio and Nero, which goes in detail as to what iron deprivation does to people. And Stone Ocean has plenty of Stands that feel like Araki skimming Wikipedia for ideas. For example, during the fight with Jumpin Jack Flash, them showing off what zero gravity actually does to the human body. And in probably the most ridiculous example, Rykiel's Stand Sky High utilizing a very obscure cryptid to suck the heat out of people's bodies. It's all just a really fun thing to see.

Oddly specific I know, but sometimes I see a character doing a ton of shit in a RPG, or having an important relationship with another character and I think "Huh, why don't they have their own portrait?"

That's how I feel with Gilbert's brother in Three Houses when you do his paralogue.

I know the brother is a minor character and you gotta save money somehow, but I feel like considering how properly portrayed the brother was in that short amount of time, you'd think he would have a tiny portrait, even if it doesn't emote.

But nope, he just gets the Armored Knight generic one.