Month: January 2020

The Grammy awards red carpet is known for its daring fashion choices, and this year some of those signature looks have been immortalized–as Pokemon fanart. Some fans noticed that the wild styles and bright colors looked a lot like the fancy duds worn by Pokemon trainers in the games and anime series.

The trend started when Twitter user Gatelygate matched four music stars with their red carpet styles–Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande, and Billy Porter–to Pokemon types. The comparison took off, and then user Refrainbow took it a step further with fanart of each musician drawn in the Pokemon style, and matched with a coordinating monster. They were dubbed the “Grammy League Elite Four.” You can see the fabulous results below:

The four command a lot of star power, as three were nominated for awards at the 2020 Grammys. Eilish won multiple awards and set a record in the process for the youngest artist in Grammy history to win Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year.

In the world of actual Pokemon, Nintendo recently announced details for the Pokemon Home, the cloud-based online service for storing and managing your monsters. The feature sets are slightly different for the Switch and mobile applications, but altogether the tools seem fairly robust. Meanwhile, Pokemon Sword and Shield will receive two large expansions this year, the first one coming in June.

Disclosure: GameSpot is owned by ViacomCBS.

Pokemon Home, a new cloud storage service in the vein of Pokemon Bank for 3DS, is set to launch on Nintendo Switch and mobile devices next month. While we’ve known about Home since last June, The Pokemon Company has only recently shared full details about the service, including how much it will cost and what kind of features it will offer.

Ostensibly the biggest appeal of Pokemon Home is being able to bring over monsters you’ve caught in previous games to Pokemon Sword and Shield on Switch, but the service provides other functionality as well. As we recently learned, Pokemon Home also allows you to trade Pokemon with other players outside of the actual games, and you can use it to check information about Pokemon as well as battling stats.

To help catch you up on everything the service entails, we’ve rounded up all the most important details about Pokemon Home below, from its price and features to all the games that are compatible with it. You can learn more about Pokemon Home on its official website.

What Is Pokemon Home?

Like Pokemon Bank, Pokemon Home is a cloud service that allows you to store Pokemon you’ve captured from various games in one place and easily move them between titles. The service also offers a handful of other ancillary functions, such as the ability to trade Pokemon, view detailed information about your monsters, and check battle data for online competitions happening in Sword and Shield.

How Much Does Pokemon Home Cost?

Pokemon Home will be available in two tiers: free and premium. The former can be used at no charge and gives you access to most of the service’s features, albeit in limited capacity; for instance, you will only be able to store a maximum of 30 Pokemon in the cloud using the free plan, and you can only deposit a single Pokemon in the Global Trade System at a time.

The premium plan, on the other hand, carries a subscription fee and offers more benefits, including greater storage capacity. With a premium plan, you will be able to deposit 6,000 Pokemon in Home, and you can place three Pokemon in the GTS at a time. A premium plan also gives you access to some additional perks and features, such as the Judge function, which allows you to view your Pokemon’s base stats.

The premium Pokemon Home plan will cost $3 USD for one month, $5 USD for three months, and $16 USD for 12 months–slightly less than the price of a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. You can see the full breakdown of features for each tier of the service below.

Do I Need Nintendo Switch Online To Use Pokemon Home?

Pokemon Home is a separate service from Nintendo Switch Online, so a subscription for one does not grant you access to the other. You don’t need to have a Nintendo Switch Online membership to use Pokemon Home, but you do need a Nintendo Account, which can be created for free on Nintendo’s website. However, a Switch Online subscription is required to use the online features in Pokemon Sword and Shield.

What Games Are Compatible With Pokemon Home?

The Nintendo Switch version of Pokemon Home is compatible with both Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee and Pokemon Sword and Shield. Additionally, both the Switch and mobile versions of the service are able to connect with Pokemon Bank, allowing you to bring your Pokemon over from 3DS to Switch. However, you will need to have a premium Pokemon Home subscription to transfer Pokemon from Bank.

Pokemon you’ve moved from Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee to Home can either be retrieved in those games or in Pokemon Sword and Shield, provided they appear in the Galar Pokedex; however, any Pokemon from Let’s Go that you’ve taken into Sword or Shield can no longer be used in their original game. Similarly, Pokemon you’ve transferred from Bank to Home can no longer be returned to 3DS.

In addition to those titles, Pokemon Home will also be compatible with Pokemon Go; however, support for the mobile game will not be available when the service launches and will implemented sometime in the future.

What’s Different Between The Switch And Mobile Versions Of Pokemon Home?

You’ll have access to both the Switch and mobile versions of Pokemon Home, provided you own the appropriate hardware and have linked them to the same Nintendo Account. While many of the service’s features are available across both platforms, each also has some unique functionality. For instance, only the Switch version of Pokemon Home is compatible with the Switch Pokemon games. The Switch version also allows you to exchange Pokemon Home Points–which you can accumulate by using the service–for Battle Points, a type of in-game currency used to purchase special battle-focused items at the Battle Tower in Sword and Shield.

The mobile version, meanwhile, offers the ability to trade Pokemon and receive exclusive Mystery Gifts. On top of that, the mobile version displays more detailed information about a Pokemon, such as its Abilities and what moves it is able to learn. You can also use the mobile version to check news updates as well as battle data for Sword and Shield’s online competitions, although this functionality will be added sometime after the service launches. You can see which features are available in each version of Pokemon Home below.

How Do You Trade Pokemon Through Home?

As previously mentioned, the mobile version of Pokemon Home offers you the ability to trade Pokemon with other players. The service features four different trading options: the Global Trade System, Wonder Box, Room Trade, and Friend Trade.

The Global Trade System allows you to offer up a Pokemon in exchange for a specific monster. You can specify which particular Pokemon you’re looking for–even if you don’t have it registered in Pokemon Home’s National Dex–down to its gender and level. When another player offers a Pokemon that matches your criteria, the monsters will automatically be traded. You will also have the option to search Pokemon other players have put up on the GTS and seek out potential trades yourself.

Wonder Box, meanwhile, functions much like the Surprise Trade feature in Pokemon Sword and Shield. A Pokemon you place in the Wonder Box will be traded for a random one offered by another player. The free version of Pokemon Home allows you to place three Pokemon at a time in the Wonder Box, while the premium plan gives you the ability to place 10.

Room Trade allows you to set up a room and trade with the other players who join. Rooms can host up to 20 players at a time, and you won’t know which Pokemon you’ll be receiving until the trades are complete. All Pokemon Home users will be able to join rooms, but only those who have a premium plan can create one.

Finally, Friend Trade allows you to trade Pokemon directly with other players you’ve registered on your Pokemon Home friends list. The Pokemon Company notes, “The features related to adding and managing friends in Pokemon Home cannot be used by users under the age of 16.”

When Does Pokemon Home Launch?

The Pokemon Company has not yet pinned down an exact release date for Pokemon Home, but the service is slated to launch for Switch and mobile sometime in February 2020.

Developer Motion Twin has announced that new DLC is coming to its rogue-lite Metroidvania game, Dead Cells. Titled The Bad Seed, Dead Cells players will be able to pick it up for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC on February 11 for $5 USD.

The Bad Seed adds two new territories to explore, The Swamp and The Arboretum. Both are alternatives to the Courtyard/Toxic Sewers and The Ramparts/Ossuary/Ancient Sewers in the original game, with the new boss designed to be on par with The Concierge. This is intended to spice up early game runs for those who have played through the core game already. The DLC also adds new weapons (including a massive scythe), enemies, and artefacts. The 1.6 update will also be arriving on consoles at the same time.

Daniel Starkey praised Dead Cells in GameSpot’s review, giving it 9/10 and saying, “Dead Cells is a phenomenal effort to blend together some very disparate genres into a tight, cohesive whole. It’s one of the better examples of how to remix ideas without losing their individual strengths”.

Super Bowl weekend is nearly here, and as is tradition, EA Sports is gearing up to use the latest Madden game to predict the outcome of the Super Bowl. Apart from the Madden simulation, there’s a nice discount on the game itself this week. For a limited time, Madden NFL 20 is on sale for 50% off on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, dropping its price to $30 from $60. This offer is mostly digital, available in the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live, and EA’s Origin, but you can also find the same discount at GameStop.

The standard edition is cheapest and just includes the base game, but the Superstar and Ultimate Superstar editions are discounted as well to $40 and $50, respectively, on consoles. These special editions come with bonus in-game content, including Gold Team Fantasy Packs and Small or Large Training Quick Sell Packs. The special editions are even cheaper on Origin, going for $32 and $40, respectively.

The latest installment in the long-running football series earned an 8/10 in GameSpot’s Madden NFL 20 review, with critic Eddie Makuch praising its new X-Factor abilities, week-to-week challenges, and more.

“Madden NFL 20 is an improved version of the annualized professional football series that excels in some areas and leaves something to be desired in others,” he wrote. “The new QB1 career mode–which includes a barebones NCAA football experience–overall feels like a half-baked idea that doesn’t deliver anything meaningful or interesting. When it comes to the on-the-field action, however, the new X-Factor and Superstar abilities shake up the familiar gameplay formula to give seasoned players and newcomers alike a fresh way to scheme plays and orchestrate strategy on both sides of the ball.”

Madden NFL 20 Super Bowl deals

Regardless of whether EA’s Super Bowl 2020 prediction comes to pass this year, there’s one thing you can count on, and that’s that we’ll get some truly entertaining commercials. As we wait for the big day to arrive, check out all the Super Bowl 2020 commercials and teasers released so far, including the tragic death of one Mr. Peanut.

Dirt Rally 2.0 is heading back to the series’ roots with the upcoming Colin McRae: Flat Out pack. The nostalgia-tinged DLC is due out on March 24, 2020 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and will be free for all season pass owners.

Outside of the US, Codemasters’ long-running off-road series started back in 1998 as Colin McRae Rally, before eventually becoming Colin McRae: Dirt in 2007. Following the rally star’s untimely death in the same year, McRae’s name eventually stopped appearing in the title after the release of Dirt 3.

The Flat Out pack selects some of the highlights of McRae’s career by letting you relive 40 of his greatest moments in Dirt Rally 2.0’s Scenarios mode. The DLC also introduces his iconic Subaru Impreza Rally S4 and Subaru Legacy RS to the game, along with 12 new routes that undulate through Scotland’s Perth and Kinross.

In 2017 social media was peppered with images of tourists riding around Tokyo streets in go-karts and dressed up as various Mario characters, strongly resembling the likes of Mario Kart. With the service being unlicensed (and in some cases dangerous), Nintendo quickly stepped in and sued Mari Mobility (formerly Maricar) for their Street Kart service, initially winning in 2018. After an unsuccessful appeal and an attempt to clean up their act, the situation has become far worse.

After rebranding and swapping out all Nintendo references with various superhero ones, Mari Mobility hoped to reduce the damages owed to Nintendo, a sum of 10 million yen (around $92,000). The appeal has backfired, however, with Mari Mobility losing and ordered to pay five times the damages, now totalling 50 million yen ($458,000), according to the Japanese website Inside Games (via Kotaku).

Apart from getting rid of the Mario costumes and branding, Mari Mobility also covered up images on its website showing past inclusions, while also updating its official blurb to make it very clear that it is done using Nintendo’s brand. “We at Street Kart is providing our service as usual. Street Kart is fully complied [sic] through local governing laws in Japan. Street Kart is in no way a reflection of Nintendo, the game ‘Mario Kart’. (We do not provide rental of costumes of Mario Series.),” the website now reads.

This was obviously not enough for the court, and Nintendo has been rigorous in defending its IP. In a statement following the ruling, Nintendo stressed that it will continue defending violations of its intellectual property that damages the brands it has built up over numerous years.