Project Soul, the internal Bandai Namco developer in-charge of the SoulCalibur fighting game series, wants to know who your favorite character is as it prepares a big announcement.
“Calling all SoulCalibur Fans! Project Soul would like to hear your voice,” said a post on the SoulCalibur Facebook page. “They need to determine precisely who are the favorite characters of the community! Project Soul is probably preparing something huge… Stay tuned and spread the news!”
The post also clarified that the survey is not related to SoulCalibur: Lost Swords, the free-to-play version of the game released last year, but the SoulCalibur brand in general. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean Bandai Namco is necessarily ready to discuss a new SoulCalibur game.
The survey includes 45 characters that appeared throughout the series. So far, it gathered 2,800 votes. You can cast your vote on PC here, and mobile devices here. The survey will last until May 31, and you only have one vote, so choose wisely.
Who’s your favorite SoulCalibur character? Let us know in the comments below.
It’s only been a few weeks since Grand Theft Auto V was released on PC, and the game’s modding scene is just getting started, but we’re already seeing some amazing, hilarious mods. While it’s not technically modifying the game, the coolest if not the most practical mod we’ve seen recently makes the GTA V’s in-game phone work with a real iPhone app.
The mod was created by a Reddit user who goes by the handle planetleak. The mod recreates the in-game app on iPhone using Xcode. Inputs on the iPhone send a URL to an Arduino webserver, which then sends the inputs into the game via keybinding macros. I can’t think of a good reason to use a real iPhone to control the in-game phone, but as you can see in the video below, it’s just impressive that the app works at all.
Unfortunately, you may have trouble installing these mods now. According to members of the modding community, the last patch rendered Script Hook V, a tool used for GTA V mods, unusable. This is forcing those who wish to continue using mods to revert to older versions of the patch, which you can only do if you’ve made backups ahead of time or are willing to download older files online from unofficial sources.
With a brand new Star Wars trilogy in the making, everyone is anxious to return to that galaxy far, far away. But Disney isn’t settling for three new films that follow the saga’s main characters and some new players–it’s also creating multiple new standalone Star Wars films, with each promising to offer a new perspective on the sci-fi universe. Collectively, these films are called the Star Wars Anthology. The first of these, Star Wars: Rogue One, follows a group of Rebels who steal the plans for the first Death Star.
But if you’re a fan of Star Wars games, you may be thinking, ‘Hey–didn’t I already steal the Death Star plans back in 1995?’ Well, you’d be right! But since Disney has effectively erased most stories from the Star Wars Expanded Universe from official canon, many of the side stories that Star Wars video games have told are now no longer recognised. Here are three of our favourite side stories Star Wars games have told which we’ll miss the most.
Who Stole The Death Star Plans?
Because Star Wars games tended to take more liberties with established canon than other tie-in media like films and comics, there are multiple conflicting instances of the Death Star plans being stolen by different people. It’s easy to see why: the theft of the plans is an important event that kicks off the very first Star Wars film. But the most regularly referred-to theft was conducted by Kyle Katarn, the protagonist of Star Wars: Dark Forces, a first-person shooter released in 1995. In the game’s opening level, Katarn infiltrates an Imperial base, shoots a lot of Stormtroopers, and recovers a chip holding the Death Star’s schematics.
But the theft of the Death Star plans didn’t stop there; Star Wars games also filled in how the plans made their way into the hands of Princess Leia. A mission in Star Wars: X-Wing requires to you protect a shuttle as it physically transports the schematics to Leia’s blockade runner, the Tantive IV. And who was in that ship? A character who actually featured in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope named Biggs Darklighter, one of Luke Skywalker’s wingmen whose X-Wing blew up during the Death Star trench run.
How did the Rebels get from Yavin to Hoth?
You can bet the Empire would be pretty pissed after a farm boy blew up its superweapon–and even though it did blow up, the Rebels’ presence on Yavin 4 was still no longer secret. So, they had to pack up shop and skedaddle. But how did they move all their stuff from Yavin to Hoth in the short time between A New Hope and Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back?
It’s an event that’s covered by a couple of different Star Wars games, firstly in X-Wing’s expansion pack, X-Wing: Imperial Pursuit. As the Empire moves to blockade the Yavin system, the Rebels prepare their capital ships to jump to hyperspace. The player must protect these frigates from waves in TIE Bombers, giving them time to evacuate the system. The evacuation ends with a dramatic transfer of a crippled capital ship’s crew to a functioning vessel, after which the player scuttles the massive craft as the last of the Rebels flee the system.
Because the evacuation was so rushed, not every Rebel convoy managed to jump to the same location. A mission in Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader picks up soon afterward, with the scattered convoys attempting to reach a rendezvous point. As Skywalker’s convoy arrives, they find the other Rebels have been ambushed and destroyed, and must flee the meeting point to arrive at Hoth with only a fraction of their supplies and manpower.
Who killed all those Bothans?
There aren’t many other lines in the original Star Wars trilogy that inspired so many off-shoot stories as “Many Bothans died to bring us this information”. The plans for the second Death Star were acquired by this group of people, yet we know almost nothing about them. Think about it–do you even know what a Bothan looks like? (It’s a furry human.)
Rather than create a scenario where you play as the Bothans and steal these plans from the Empire, Star Wars: TIE Fighter included a tour of duty where you hunt down and massacre the Bothans as they flee with the technical readouts in tow. This isn’t just a single mission where you gun down ships labelled “Bothans”, but a multi-stage campaign that involves capturing Bothan spies and delivering them to Darth Vader, destroying a massive Bothan dreadnought, and then sneaking into the Rebel fleet to double-check they believed the plans and would therefore fall into Vader’s trap in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Indeed, many Bothans died, and most of them by your hand.
Based in San Francisco, KJ Yu is Studio Art Director at Concept Art House, a team that specialises in all kinds of art for the video game business. CAH has worked on games for companies like Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Epic, Riot and Wizards of the Coast.
Floyd Mayweather—who is a coward —nevertheless won his big fight on the weekend. If you missed it, and need to be up to speed for workplace/lunchroom discussions, this recreation by Noober Goober Gaming of the match in Punch-Out! pretty much nails it.
As has been the tradition for Suicide Squad thus far, David Ayer’s tweeted the first full-on cast photo, with pretty much everyone (save the Joker and Amanda Waller) in costume. UPDATED: Now with a look at Deadshot’s full costume.
Recreating Grand Theft Auto V would have been too easy. Here, some mad Russians use a drone (!) and some very skilled choreography to recreate the top-down Grand Theft Auto 2 instead. And it’s awesome.
Last week, something very cool happened : the Internet Archive devised a way for people to play classic DOS games inside an actual tweet. Hope you got your fun in on Friday, though, because Twitter have since pulled the plug.
The folks over at CineFix, who specialize in reimagining your favorite movies and television shows as 8-bit and 16-bit games, have done it again. This time, they turned their attention to Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Spirited Away.
As always, CineFix created something that looks like it could have been an actual game back in the day, but a little better.
Other demakes we’ve seen in the past range from videos showing what Grand Theft Auto V could have been like on Commodore 64 to playable Titanfall and Borderlands ones. Let us know what your favorites have been in the comments below.
The Kickstarter campaign for the Banjo-Kazooie successor called Yooka-Laylee from a team of former Rare developers went live yesterday and quickly hit its funding goal of £175,000. A day later, the Kickstarter campaign crushed that initial target, raising a whopping, £1 million, or roughly $1.5 million.
“Obviously we would like to offer our sincere thanks to everyone who has backed the project so far,” Playtonic Games said in a Kickstarter update. “Our intention from the beginning was to use Kickstarter as a means to improve Yooka-Laylee, and you’ve helped us shape it into one fine specimen.”
Playtonic says the additional funds will allow it to release the game on PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U simultaneously.
Since it reached all of its initially stated stretch goals, Playtonic added two new ones. If funding reaches £1.1 million, Playtonic will add an old-school N64 shader mode and a credits GK Rap video written by Grant Kirkhope. If it hits £1.2 million, Playtonic will produce a developer walkthrough and commentary Let’s Play video.
You can secure a copy of Yooka-Laylee by pledging at least $15. Backing at that level gets you a copy of the PC version, while you’ll need to pay around $22 to get a console copy.
