This week on Pause Screen Kyle talks more Smash, Tetris 99, and Fire Emblem Echoes, while William has been too sick to play anything except some Daemon X Machina. For this week’s Hype Train we talk about the EVO lineup, Pokemon Sword and Shield, Detective Pikachu, Anthem, Darksiders 3, some journalism, and an unusual game title. We also discuss Reggie’s upcoming retirement, potential relationships between Microsoft and Nintendo, and GOG’s recent layoffs. Come pause with us!
Pokemon Sword and Shield got announced, are still definitely Pokemon
Who cares, there was a second trailer for Detective Pikachu!
Anthem is kind of out, and people kind of don’t like it.
Darksiders 3 made back its budget!
Cecilia D’Anastasio from Kotaku won the digital news award at the Writers’ Guild of America for her story on Riot Games’ sexism
Square Enix launched a Twitter account for their new IP, “Last Idea”. The jokes write themselves. It’s even a mobile gacha game! https://twitter.com/LASTIDEA_RPG
We have returned! Pause Screen is back with some audio only episodes! Kaz is sick for now, but Kyle is here to catch us up with Kingdom Hearts 3, Tetris 99, Smash, and a few other games. Meanwhile William has only been playing Tales of Vesperia and the Bleach gacha game. In the Hype Train we mention Piranha Plant joining Smash Ultimate, Hollow Knight: Silksong, along with a couple other topics, and a bunch of stuff from the Nintendo Direct including Fire Emblem, Bloodstained, Astral Chain, and Link’s Awakening. In our Discussions, we mention Blizzard’s recent firing spree, Apex Legends, and hitting the reset button on Metroid Prime 4. Come pause with us!
HYPE TRAIN *toot toot*
Piranha Plant dropped on Tuesday with the release of Smash 2.0.0. Plus, they gave us patch notes! Incineroar buffs for days. Also, don’t use PP in All Star or Classic if you like your save data.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is going to be a full sequel starring Hornet. Looks good.
Wargroove released and is getting good reviews. Check it out if you’re into Advance Wars.
Jump Force and Crackdown 3 certainly exist
Goodbye, Wii Shop Channel
Nintendo Direct
Mario Maker 2 (June)
Marvel
Bloodstained (Summer)
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (July 26)
Hellblade (Spring)
Deltarune (Feb 28)
Yoshi (March)
FF IX (Yesterday) FFVII (March 26)
Starlink updates
Oninaki (summer)
Daemon X Machina (Summer)
Astral Chain (August 30)
Link’s Awakening (2019)
Discussion:
Blizzard fired some people. Plus, they don’t have any major games planned for 2019.
Apex Legends
Nintendo announced that it’s restarting development on Metroid Prime 4.
They have Retro taking the lead on the project now, so we’ll probably have to wait 3-4 more years. But maybe this means we’ll have a different Retro project on our hands soon? Plus, it’s refreshing to have this kind of honest communication about an anticipated game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLIv_UXI_So
With sickness spreading through the Pausescreen crew, William unfortunately couldn’t join us this week. Kaz spent a bunch of time playing Stardew Valley, and Kyle stayed up way too late playing KH3. He also played and brought up the charming Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, an interesting VR game. On the Hype Train we talk about the Wii Shop channel closing forever, RE2 remake, Erik Wolpaw’s return to Valve, Farming simulator’s new esport and more. In the news we try to figure out what is going on at Gearbox as lawsuits and serious criminal accusations fly back and forth, We celebrate with Bungie on their split with Activision and speculate what the future will hold. We discuss the loss of some gaming history with Machinima’s dirty move on their Youtube channel, And we talk about how much american’s spent on Video games in 2018. Come Pause with us!
HYPE TRAIN *toot toot*
The Wii Shop channel closes forever next week, so make sure to download your stuff/use your leftover points.
Resident Evil 2 Remake is out tomorrow, and got great reviews.
KINGDOM HEARTS 3. It’s real! And getting good reviews!
Erik Wolpaw is working at Valve again. He wrote Portal 1 / 2 and co-wrote Half Life 2 eps. 1 and 2, so that potentially means good things
Smash set a new record for most money made in the first month by a console exclusive game. Crazy. It unseated Halo Reach, which has held the title since 2010.
AGDQ raised $2.4 million and was neat. The Mega Man X relay race was excellent. Urban Yeti and the DK Tropical Freeze races were also pretty memorable.
HBomberguy did a 100% run of Donkey Kong 64 to raise money for a UK charity supporting trans youth (Mermaids UK). Grant Kirkhope, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and tons of other celebs showed up on stream, and he raised $340k over the course of a grueling 57 hour run. https://techraptor.net/content/streamer-hbomberguy-raises-230000-trans-charity
Nintendo is suing Soulja Boy. Surprise! And so is Epic and everyone else as he keeps announcing new consoles “with Fortnite.”
Discussion:
So, Gearbox.
Its former general counsel (Wade Callendar) is suing them for Randy Pitchford supposedly having child porn. The company explained it away as being ‘barely legal’ porn, and that it was discovered (along with secret company docs) when he left a USB drive with it at a Medieval Times. He had the videos on there because he was impressed by the ‘magic’ of it, and he’s an amateur magician. Also, Gearbox is suing Callendar for improper use of funds and failing to reimburse, on things such as tuition, parties, and ‘getting six pack abs’. Yep.
They now own the Destiny IP and are independent once again. It’ll be interesting to see if they can save it, and it’s real interesting that Activision let it go after their 10 year contract and all the marketing money they dumped into that thing. Hopefully they can Make Destiny Great Again.
Machinima’s Youtube channel was wiped this past week.
It’s a big milestone, since they were key in bringing the streamer/videos of video games culture of today to fruition. Apparently the new owner is pulling things down to put on a streaming service somewhere. Any fond memories?
Americans spent $43b on video games this past year – a new high by a long shot.
We keep saying gaming is only getting bigger, but it’s crazy how bit it’s actually getting. Where do we go from here? How will new consoles make the transition? Will VR catch on, or will it take 20 more years like normal games did? Side note: Fortnite was $2.4 billion of that. That’s $6.6 million per day. Geez.
We’re wrapping up the year here at Pause Screen, and other than some World of Warcraft and Celeste, all three of us have been playing a lot of Smash Ultimate! In the Hype Train, we talk a bit about the Smash DLC, Below, the Nintendo Classic Consoles ending production, and a PSVR sale. In our discussions, we tackle Blizzard’s sudden announcement about Heroes of the Storm, suing Epic Games about Fortnite dances, a Kingdom Hearts 3 leak, and the dubious Sonic movie posters. Finally, we wrap up with each of our top five ‘games we played this year’ lists! Come pause with us!
Including the guy who did the Carlton and a kid who was one of the first to floss on Youtube. We live in special times.
Kingdom Hearts 3 got leaked into the wild.
Nomura says the disc doesn’t contain the epilogue or ending video though, so not EVERYTHING can be spoiled. It’s interesting, this is the first use of a day one patch that I think was a good idea—because of course this game leaked from a distribution center.
Heads up, Kingdom Hearts fans:
The full version (!) of KH3 appears to be out in the wild (some screenshots and videos exist that I won't share here)
This Week we countdown to Smash Ultimate release by talking about video games! Kyle has reached a game ending glitch while trying to 100% Spyro, and played some OnRush and HotS. Kaz thoroughly enjoyed exploding corpses in Diablo III and barely failed to kill Gu’Huun. William’s impressions of Celeste is dropping below luke warm and he continues to play Xenoblade. On the Hype train we kind of live cast the game awards, talk about soulja boy’s new console, and Counter Strike is now F2P. In the discussions we talk about Epic’s new game store, hopefully the competition will help make steam better, we can’t wait! on the down side of the news, Red Dead Online’s economy is having a really tough time, Fallout 76 nylon bags and Bethesda’s ‘fix’ continues to be the worst for PR, and Playstation Classic’s lazy implementation. Come Pause with us!
HYPE TRAIN *toot toot*
The Game Awards are happening right now!
Nintendo announced a Fire Emblem Expo, to be held in Japan in May
Fallout 76 continues to be a dumpster fire for Bethesda.
They’re now making actual canvas bags to give to people for the CE despite there being a ‘materials shortage’ or ‘too expensive’ when they originally went to do it and swapped to nylon. Plus, the Bethesda launcher was apparently showing peoples’ personal data to anyone who wanted to see it for a while. Plus, the respec system they added is also hot garbage. https://kotaku.com/bethesda-support-leaks-fallout-76-customer-names-addre-1830892930
Speaking of dumpster fires, the Playstation Classic.
You can access the emulator settings by plugging in a keyboard and pressing escape, including switching to the superior NTSC versions of ROMs and adding scan lines. The minimum of effort that went into this thing is astounding.
So, turns out you can access the emulator settings of the PlayStation Classic by plugging in a keyboard and pressing Escape
This week on Pause Screen Kyle talks Disneyland, SNES games, Heroes, and Spyro, while Kaz has spent some time with BattleChasers, Warcraft, and Red Dead Redemption 2, and William finishes with Torna: The Xenoblade DLC. For news, we mention Darksiders 3, MediEvil, the Game Awards, Smash Ultimate being leaked, and Kyle gives us a … synopsis of the Kingdom Hearts games. For discussion, we talk Sony pulling out of E3 2019, Bethesda and the Fallout 76 disaster, the Switch breaking sales records, the dismal PS Classic, and the end of the Nintendo Creators Program. Finishing up, we talk impressions of the Detective Pikachu film’s first trailer. Come pause with us!
Discussion topics
HYPE TRAIN *toot toot*
Darksiders 3 is out! It’s getting pretty mixed reviews, but I’m just glad it exists.
The MediEvil remake got a trailer, and it looks… okay?
Kingdom Hearts 3 has gone gold!
The Game Awards are going to have world reveals for 10+ games. Definitely tune in!
SMASH BROS RUMOR OF THE WEEK
The whole game is leaked now, courtesy of sketchy Mexican retailers. There’s only one week to go!
Discussion:
Sony is skipping E3 in 2019.
Crazy, they usually have a huge presence there. This’ll change the show dramatically. Any bets on if others follow suit?
The crew is back after the Blizzcon break! Kaz, William and Kyle decide to take a different approach to the cast taking a deep dive into the games we’re playing and talking about Blizzcon. There Also was a bunch of smash brothers news to discuss, but the meat of the podcast surrounds Diablo: Immortal. Is this a fatal misstep by Blizzard? Come pause with us to hear our thoughts!
This week on Pause Screen, the goatman is consuming Kaz’s life but she still managed to unlock flying in a old zone that doesn’t matter much, Kyle over-100%’d Slim-San and got noticed by the devs on twitter, and William didn’t get to play much -poor guy. On the hype train we get excited for Soul Calibur, TWEWY and the Diablo 3 switch bundle. We also look at the success of CODBLOPSIIII, and Dragalia Lost. In the discussion section we dive deep into the over worked Dev controversy brought up by Dan Houser and the team of Red Dead 2. We have a laugh over PS4s being soft bricked before diving into a discussion about the recent rise of Japanese game titles. Come pause with us!
HYPE TRAIN *toot toot*
Soul Calibur is out this week, and is getting good reviews
Ditto with CODBLOPSIIII. Also, it’s already made $500mm, apparently.
TWEWY Final Remix came out too, though I hear it’s not as good as its DS counterpart.
Also, I learned that Cloud’s limit expires after 15 seconds when it fills, which will make him suck a lot less to fight against.
Discussion:
There’s been a big kerfuffle over a Rockstar interview where Dan Houser (R* co-founder) mentioned his writing team had been pulling 100 hour weeks to finish Red Dead Redemption 2.
Is it time for game devs to unionize? Will crunch time ever go away? What about the children?
Japan continues to see the popularity of its games increase—Yakuza 6 sold as much in the west as it did in good old Nippon. SEGA says it’s because of a good translation.
Think we’re back to the wonder days of th1 6 and 32 bit eras, or is this a flash in the pan? Why is Japan so big again?
This week on Pause Screen Kyle continues playing through platformers old and new, William inches further in Torna: The Golden Country, and Kaz is still stuck in the progression loop of WoW minutia. In our news, we talk about custom Soul Calibur VI characters, the Kingdom Hearts package on PSN, PSN username changes, Mel’Ganis coming to HoTS, wireless Gamecube controllers, and the future of Telltale’s final season of the Walking Dead. In our discussion section, we tackle Microsoft’s new streaming project, and their soon-to-be acquisition of Obsidian. After that, we talk a bit about remaking games, the pluses and minuses. Come pause with us!
There might be brothers that you can smash. Unconfirmed, though.
MELANCHOLY, YET HOPEFUL TRAIN
Skybound Games is partnering up with the skeleton of Telltale to finish and release episodes 3 and 4 of The Walking Dead’s final season. Apparently they’re looking to hire the old staff back, but good luck with that. https://twitter.com/skyboundgames/status/1048735364452634626
Discussion:
Microsoft is making an initial push into cloud streaming with a project called ‘xCloud’, with the goal of being able to ‘play Halo anywhere’.
Makes sense, given their recent studio acquisitions and Obsidian’s financial troubles in the past. I think with a bit more of a guiding hand, Obsidian will be able to make some really compelling console RPGs.
The current trend in disney movies is to ‘remake’ their animated classics in live action, current trend in games is to remaster. Do you think that any game could be a successful ‘remake’
This week on PauseScreen, Kaz gets sucked into Wow… but its into content that is three years old. Wiliam is loving Torna and Kyle gives his review of Megaman 11 and more games no one has heard of. In the news Kaz mourns Mike Morhaime’s departure, but is excited over blizzcon merch. In the odd combinations corner, Megaman is getting a live action movie and Skrillex is helping make Kingdom Hearts 3’s main theme. on the sad train, Telltale is completely dead. In Discussions we talk about the rumors of an upgraded switch release, will they go Crazy like the DS/3DS? Then the crew gets excited about the leaked Harry Potter game! Come pause with us!
