Author: Álvaro Arbonés

Nintendo slowly updates its Nintendo Classics game catalog, and this week it was the Game Boy’s turn. Specifically, three Game Boy games and one Game Boy Advance game make up an eclectic lineup, which leaves us with a couple of gems and a couple of picks aimed more at those with more specific tastes.

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Wario, the star of the show

Starting with the biggest and most eye-catching title, the standout of the new additions is Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Released in 1994, it was the first game to star Super Mario’s antagonist and went on to launch the Wario Land series. As a platformer built around the destructible environments, with huge, striking sprites, even today it’s still a very interesting and fun game.

For more dedicated fans, there are Fortified Zone and The Swords of Hope II. Published in 1991 and 1992 respectively, they’re a top-down shooter that lets you switch between two characters and an RPG with simplified mechanics. While neither game will win an originality award, they’re solid games that show the versatility of the Game Boy catalog.

For the Game Boy Advance, there’s a true 2-in-1 collection: Dr. Mario & Puzzle League is an updated, colorized collection of Dr. Mario and Puzzle League, Panel de Pon in Japan. Two classic puzzle games that rank among the best puzzle games of their era of all time, surpassed only by genuine masterpieces like Tetris and PuyoPuyo.

To play these games you’ll need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. But if you have one, it’s well worth spending a few hours with Wario Land or Dr. Mario.

Sacha Baron Cohen is inseparable from Ali G in many people’s minds, and with good reason. For years he played this irreverent character and, in fairness, it was the one that made him internationally famous. That’s why it’s no surprise that he’s decided to bring him back, even if he’s decided to do it out of the blue.

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Ali G is back in full force

Without telling anyone, Sacha Baron Cohen has been shooting an Ali G movie and has completed filming it. The reason for shooting it without telling anyone has been to recreate the surprise of his earlier work. He wanted to avoid the hype and build the kind of hype that may have surrounded some of his latest movies and that kept them from having the same impact as his first movies, like Ali G Indahouse, Borat or Bruno.

Refusing to give any kind of detail about the movie, he has only said that he has shot a new movie and that at some point in the future we’ll have more news about it. The last time we saw the character was, two years ago now, when he appeared on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon out of the blue.

Although we don’t have a release date or details, being Ali G we know exactly what to expect from the movie. Caustic humor, politically incorrect comments, lots of comments about drugs and, probably, drug use itself or at least the suggestion of their use in all kinds of situations. But that’s the kind of humor we expect from Sacha Baron Cohen. And now all that’s left is to see how it works in a world that has changed a lot since Ali G was created way back in 1998.

Apex Legends has been doing numerous collaborations for a while now. The latest and most popular have been with Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Mobile Suit Gundam, showing they’re happy to branch out beyond their usual style and audience. Though this time it seems the crossover will be much bigger than usual, because the new collaboration will be with Cyberpunk, specifically with 2077 and Edgerunners.

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An ideal collaboration

Called Apex Legends x Cyberpunk, this collaboration will include characters and cosmetics from both the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and the anime series Cyberpunk Edgerunners. With standout skins for the game’s Legends based on Lucy, David Martinez, Rebecca, V, Royce, Panam, and Lizzy Wizzy.

But that’s not all, since it’ll also bring changes in the game world. District E will change to reflect Night City, the city where the events of Cyberpunk take place, because according to Eduardo Agostini, the game’s world director, District E “is already vaguely inspired by Night City in many ways,” but now many iconic buildings and places from the city will be added to fully bring that to life.

In addition, Wildcard mode will get two new Cyberpunk-inspired mods: the Sandevistan and the Blackwall Breach. The first giving players a speed boost and the second allowing them to break their opponents’ shields. Both should shake up matches quite a bit. You’ll be able to see for yourself when the event comes to Apex Legends on July 14 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Persona 4 is an excellent game that, for many people, is the best game in its franchise. With a cast of charismatic, endearing characters, with dungeons brimming with personality and taking place in a town with character, it overflows with charm and stands out notably from the rest of the series. Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some problematic aspects. Like, for example, the insensitivity of some of its characters. Yasuke in particular.

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An insensitive teenager (that is, a teenager)

On this subject, Kazuhisa Wada, General Producer of the Persona Team, has spoken about the changes they’ve made to the character. “He is a bit insensitive in terms of how he sometimes treats people outside his circle,” he said. “So we wanted to soften him and make him fit in a bit more with the world we live in now,” stressing that they are aware that he hasn’t always been perceived as being as sensitive as he should be.

In any case, these comments perhaps sound somewhat disconnected from current sensibilities on their own. Yasuke’s comments about homosexuality and about women on various occasions in the game aren’t only problematic in 2026, they already were in 2008, when the original game was released. Although that was part of the character development: he’s a good-hearted teenager, but with misguided views, who learns over time. Something that characterizes many teenagers today and throughout all of human history.

While it’s true that Yasuke is and was a bit insensitive, that doesn’t change the fact that he always has been and that it was part of the character. Although it’s true that he may have been a bit more insensitive than intended. And now, in the remake, Persona 4 Revival, announced for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, we’ll get to see a slightly more sensitive Yasuke, on February 18, 2027.

Sword Art Online is one of the most famous MMORPGs in the world. Played entirely in virtual reality, its goal is to clear the 100 floors of the tower of Aincrad, a metal castle that looms on the horizon no matter from what point in the world it’s seen. No one has ever managed to do it, but there are many legends about it. The problem is that if you want to do it, the game has been closed since 2022 after a dramatic system failure that left more than 300 players trapped inside it with no possibility of returning to the physical world.

Of course, this didn’t happen in our world. But it’s the premise of Sword Art Online, one of the most popular light novels of the 2000s which, even today, continues to amass tremendous popularity and which is now getting a new video game adaptation: Echoes of Aincrad. But what explains such longevity and popularity? That’s what we want to clarify. Because no franchise survives two and a half decades without bringing something to the table.

A franchise that put a new spin on isekai

Although today isekai, the idea of a person going to another world and acquiring inhuman powers, is tremendously common, at the start of the 00s it wasn’t. And in 2002, at the time the first volume of Sword Art Online was published, it was seen as an original and very interesting twist for one very simple reason: because it was.

This work by Reki Kawahara, under the pseudonym Fumio Kunori, proposed an idea that wasn’t being explored then, what if you could embody the protagonist of your favorite video game? And what if you could not only embody him, but were forced to do it to survive, because if you failed you’d die trying. With a combination of science fiction, fantasy, and drama, he managed to write a self-published novel on the Internet that managed to captivate the public because it captured the feeling of the moment perfectly. It was something hundreds of thousands of people dreamed about.

After all, we’re talking about 2002. Not only was it the biggest boom moment for JRPGs, but also for MMORPGs. The idea of character customization, improved graphics —which at the time were perceived as a leap almost to hyperrealism, ridiculous as that may seem to us now— and playing with friends and strangers over the Internet, especially in Japan’s case (much more advanced in that sense), made that mindset easier. Kawahara simply knew how to translate it into fictional terms.

That’s what made Sword Art Online work. Not that it was a brilliant work, but that it captured the zeitgeist. The spirit of the moment. Everyone dreamed of what it would be like to live in Azeroth or Vana’diel or Ragnarök and he knew how to dramatize it in an interesting and addictive way.

How to keep a successful franchise alive

But besides that, another thing it has known how to do is keep the franchise alive by renewing it constantly over time. The number of spinoffs he has gone on making, adapting to the times, especially considering the change in Japanese audiences’ interests, shows Kawahara’s intelligence and perspective. When he saw that Japanese audiences were gradually becoming more and more interested in FPSs, first-person shooters, he began to focus his stories more on that genre, giving rise to stories like Sword Art Online: Phantom Bullet. Giving his franchise longevity.

Although it’s not just that. It’s also the fact that it has been adapted and shaped in countless ways over time. Anime adaptations, films, and video games have kept its popularity from waning and carried it to new generations. Thus managing to stay relevant even when it no longer should necessarily have the same impact among new generations.

Hence the point of this Echoes of Aincrad. That, quietly and without anyone expecting it, it can become one of the year’s big phenomena: it’s in the top 40 in wishlist activity and top 15 on the top sellers lists, according to steamdb. Which means it may have a much more spectacular launch than most people are imagining. Especially, expecting that a game based on an anime license that’s already almost 25 years old won’t make that much noise anymore.

But Sword Art Online still has a lot of pull. For good reasons. And Echoes of Aincrad, which comes out on July 10 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC can prove it.

There isn’t a more dramatic date in cinema this year than December 18. There probably hasn’t been a tenser showdown in film history before, because never before have there been two productions more unwilling to give an inch as they go head-to-head to see who takes the trophy home. Because that day two of the year’s biggest productions are released: Avengers: Doomsday and Dune, Part 3. And the second of them has unveiled a new trailer.

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A trailer with more details to get things warmed up

Dune, Part 3 already unveiled its first trailer a few months ago, but now it’s shown a new trailer to display not only its visual spectacle, but also a little more of what we can expect story-wise. That as well as officially introducing us to Robert Pattinson in his role as Scytale, the film’s villain, whose appeal lies in how manipulative and adept at schemes he is.

Although the fight is uneven, Dune is coming off grossing 411 million with its first installment and 715 million with its second, so it isn’t an impossible fight. And it’s not the first time that two high-profile films have met in this way. It’s worth remembering the summer of Barbenheimer, when Barbie and Oppenheimer opened on the same weekend and both films ended up benefiting tremendously from it, with both becoming major box-office hits thanks to the publicity they gained from it.

It’s also true that Barbie and Oppenheimer were aimed at very different audiences, whereas Avengers: Doomsday and Dune, Part 3 have at least some overlap between audiences. But with the possibility that audiences end up seeing one and then the other on the same day, we can’t rule out the clash of titans ending up turning into an alliance of titans called Doomsdune.

Bloomberg, in a recent report, has said that Obsidian, the studio behind landmark titles like Fallout: New Vegas, but also behind recent titles as acclaimed as Avowed or The Outer Worlds, could be behind the next installment in the Fallout franchise. A change in Bethesda’s policies after the latest restructuring at Microsoft following Asha Sharma’s arrival as Xbox’s new CEO.

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A Fallout in many senses

According to sources of journalist Jason Schreier, as part of the restructuring of 3,200 employees who will lose their jobs at Xbox over the next 12 months, Obsidian will lose a quarter of its workforce. Which means between 60 and 70 employees. Which will, in turn, make development of this new project harder.

Although Obsidian will keep its own projects like Grounded 2 and the planned post-launch content for The Outer Worlds 2, a sequel to Avowed has been canceled and they will devote themselves to making a new installment for Fallout. An absolute anomaly because, for 16 years now, Todd Howard, director of Starfield, hasn’t allowed anyone to make games in the Fallout or The Elder Scrolls franchises without his direct involvement. Precisely since Obsidian released, in 2010 and after being given barely 18 months of development, the acclaimed and much-loved Fallout: New Vegas.

In fact, according to Bloomberg, the person in charge of making this new Fallout will be the director of New Vegas: Josh Sawyer. Who, they say, had been working on a game “structurally and thematically similar to Fallout,” but which formally was not going to be part of the franchise**. But considering that Fallout hasn’t received a new installment since Fallout 76, in 2018, and given the tremendous success of the series on Prime Video, it seems logical that Xbox would want to capitalize on the franchise’s fame. Even if Todd Howard doesn’t like it.

Dwayne Johnson will star in a new action drama called Free Byrd. Directed by Greg Kwedar, director of the acclaimed Sing Sing, this film will follow Johnson as a motorcyclist who works as a stuntman and is hiding his dementia diagnosis from everyone around him, including his mechanic brother, while risking everything for one last big jump.

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A film about the beauty of asking for help

The film’s producers have described Free Byrd as a movie that “examines and confronts the vast mysteries of the mind and the beauty and power of asking for help before it is too late”. This suggests that the dramatic side is going to carry more weight than the action, although with him being a motorcyclist who works as a stuntman, there shouldn’t be any shortage of the latter either.

As for the film, Dwayne Johnson has been nothing short of ecstatic. “‘Free Byrd’ is a gift in many ways. It’s emblematic both of the sacred beauty of life and of its raw, unfeeling reality,” he told Variety. “Artists Equity have been incredible artistic and cinematic partners, who not only share Greg’s vision for the film, but are all connected to our story in unique and personal ways”.

While it does not yet have a scheduled release date, the film promises to generate buzz once they decide to release it. And given its awards potential, it’s not unreasonable to expect a release starting in September next year so that it has a chance at the Oscars.

Slitherine has acquired the rights to the Blood Bowl video games. Until now Nacon held those rights, but after the company entered insolvency proceedings last February due to its inability to make payments, it has been making moves to get rid of some of its IPs. Among them was Blood Bowl, owned by Cyanide, one of Nacon’s studios, which has also entered insolvency proceedings, and with this move they’re looking to improve their situation.

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Blood Bowl lives on, the struggle goes on

Blood Bowl is a parody of American football, even more violent than the real sport, created by Games Workshop in 1986. Featuring creatures from Warhammer Fantasy, though not explicitly set in its world —since that would be a bit of a mismatch—, it’s a franchise that has had multiple video game adaptations. They have been widely praised by fans.

Slitherine, also, has committed to supporting Cyanide in the development of future games. While it has no interest in acquiring either the studio or a stake in it, Cyanide CEO Patrick Pligersdorffer has stated that the company is the perfect partner to “secure the future of the Blood Bowl video games”.

Beyond that, this is a natural acquisition because Slitherine has already worked with Warhammer licenses before. With very popular games like Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector and Warhammer 40,000: Gladius – Relics of War under their belt, it’s their way of expanding as a producer as well in a universe and genre they know well and where they’ve already proven successful.