These Holographic Augmented Reality Machine rooms are virtual training simulators that let you battle waves of increasingly difficult enemies by yourself, with companion AI, or with four other real players. When the beta goes live this August, you can choose from Iron Man, Kamala Khan, Black Widow, and The Hulk and take them through these challenge rooms to test your teamwork and earn various nameplates that will carry over to the main game. There will be four challenge rooms available in the beta, with more appearing in the full game.
Developer Crystal Dynamics also touched on other Marvel’s Avengers aspects during the War Table livestream. The studio shared details on the cooperative Warzone missions, a look at the campaign content, and more.
The beta for Marvel’s Avengers will open first to PlayStation 4 owners. Those who pre-ordered the game on Sony’s current-gen system can access the beta on August 7. The following week, on August 14, PC and Xbox One players who pre-ordered the game–alongside all PS4 players–will get their hands on the beta before it is opened to everyone else on August 21. You can check out our Marvel’s Avengers pre-order guide to learn what other bonuses you get with buying early, as well as what editions are currently available to purchase before it drops on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on September 4.
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Frostpunk‘s third and final DLC, On The Edge, is coming to PC on August 20. The new expansion takes place after the events of the base game, and revolves around an old military base, exposed by the great storm.
A scouting party is sent from New London to establish a supply chain from the old base. With no food resources near the base you will need to rely on shipments from New London and it has its own demands. The weather is less severe at the base, but there are more challenges to overcome for survival.
On The Edge features a new survival story, a brand new map with new structures, new methods of dividing or unites your people, and new mechanics for building economic and diplomatic relationships.
Frostpunk’s most recent DLC, The Last Autumn, took place prior to the base game and prior to the great storm. No release date was given for console versions of On The Edge. On The Edge will be available as part of the game’s season pass or can be purchased individually for $13 USD.
Frostpunk is available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4, and is available on Xbox Game Pass for console and PC.
Riot Games has received sharp criticism over a recent announcement that it would be partnering with Saudi Arabian city Neom for its League of Legends European Championship (LEC) Summer Season. Critics of the move, including some from within the LoL community, have raised concerns regarding Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses, ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the city’s implications for an indigenous tribe.
The announcement named Neom as its partner city and said it will be “a new model for sustainable living, working, and prospering” in Saudi Arabia. It also said that Neom will “help future-proof the LEC stage” by sponsoring the Oracle Lens feature, which predicts team movements and strategies.
Neom is a $500 billion mega-city currently being built in Saudi Arabia, financed by Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. That connection itself has led to much of the criticism, as American intelligence agencies have concluded that bin Salman ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. In broader terms, Saudi Arabia has a poor human rights record, especially in regards to women and LGBTQ individuals.
The move drew sharp criticism from across the spectrum, and many employees within Riot Games or associated casters and other on-camera talent were quick to distance themselves from the move. Those included a statement from lead gameplay designer Mark Yetter.
“I can’t and do not personally support this partnership,” Yetter wrote on Twitter. “Sponsors are essential for the esport to thrive, but not at the cost of human life and freedoms.”
Call Of Duty: Warzone has been out for a few seasons, and while it has some great ideas, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Below, we’ve detailed 11 things that the game needs to change to make it a better experience ahead of next season. Some of these changes include a better drop system, expanded communication ping wheel, improved armor mechanics, better climbing system, balancing, and major map changes and events.
We’ve written what we think can improve below, but you’re welcome to watch the video version of this feature above. Regardless, what are your ideas on balance and how to improve Warzone? What just sticks in your craw when you play? Let us know in the comments below, if your ideas are great we might make another feature and video.
Make Team Drop More Like Apex
In Warzone, it’s a frequent bother for squad leaders picking a drop point to have their teammates bail out separately from them and scatter to the wind. This isn’t an issue in Apex Legends, which has the ideal system that allows the team leader to drop the squad all at once, so at least everyone ends up on the same part of the map, and then anyone who wants to can peel off. We’re hoping Warzone can implement the same in its team drop mechanics in a future update.
Expand The Ping System
There are times in a match when you need your team to watch a specific area, or not do something, or split cash to buy back someone from death, or do any other number of important, time-sensitive things you can’t communicate off-mic. Communication is everything in a battle royale, so something like a robust ping and response system would help those who want to talk to their teammates without hopping on mic. Again, Apex Legends does this really well, and Warzone should learn from it. It feels dreadful not to be able to say things like thank you to fellow players.
Aggressive Ban Hammer
We need a better ping system in part because many players have good reasons to be off-mic. Games like Rainbow Six Siege have mastered the art of the ban for toxic behavior, racist names, and anything else that makes their game a less welcoming place. One Call Of Duty studio, Infinity Ward, recently tweeted that they will crackdown and hand out permanent bans for repeat offenders, which is excellent; this has been a problem for many, many years. We’re going to keep this one in subsequent improvement lists until we see it implemented because if you want to play Warzone, you should always feel welcomed by the community.
That Main Menu
Confusing UI aside, a few of us in the office have had the experience on PS4 where the main menu spins up our console’s fans to an alarming hovercraft speed. Some of us have even had our console shut down from overheating because of the main menu. At this point, many of us would prefer a simple text-based menu that doesn’t make our PS4s scream in agony. Thank you.
Run Faster With Your Fists Out
We’ve had it good with movement in Apex Legends for too long to go back. When that gas cloud is closing in, and all you picked up was an LMG and a Rocket that reduce your run speed to John Woo levels of slow-motion, you really need to put all the guns away and run faster–like significantly faster. There are indeed ways to build this with double time and a knife, but we want it all the time. Let us run faster when we’ve only got our fists out.
Interesting World-Changing Events
It may not have happened yet, but we’re hoping a future season will have character drama and substantial map changes, such as nukes going off in challenges. So far, we’ve just made it into a few bunkers, been stuck on a frozen winter map through the summer, and sold winter- or cold- themed items in the store.
We say this because Fortnite has been doing fantastic map-altering events and “you had to be there” moments for years now. It’s also hard to get excited about characters we know nothing about. Please give us the animated shorts and stories outside the game. There have been leaks that Season 5 might finally deliver on some of this, and we’re ready.
Change the Armor System
Several folks in the GameSpot office would like to see the game’s armor system change. The current armor system causes players to waste plates because it’s limited to filling or topping off one of three armor bars. Instead, plates should give you a fixed number of armor points, the full 50 points per plate, and potentially spill over from one armor bar into the next. We could also use a bit more variety in terms of armor rarity.
Teachable Challenges
One of the best games of all time, Titanfall 2 (fight us), had a system of challenges that forced you to get good with each weapon. Those challenges were based on showing the player what a gun was made to do. Far too many challenges in Warzone are simply chores or have nothing to do with the weapon blueprint they unlock. We’re talking even simple stuff like teaching players to make sniper kills from the edge of the gas or use RPGs to destroy vehicles.
Currently, there are even broken challenges that don’t count, which can be frustrating to experience after spending hours trying to complete them. Overall, the end rewards for Warzone Challenges aren’t very good, and that needs to change.
Improved Climbing System
Far too many times, you’ll be on the run from the gas and get hung up on cliffsides or unclimbable rocks. When it comes to terrain, there isn’t a reliable way to tell what is and isn’t climbable, and there’s nothing worse than getting got because your ankle snagged. It’d be nice if players could reliably understand what can and can’t be scaled in the heat of battle.
Better Gas Masks
Equipping the gas mask should be a one-time thing. The automatic and unskippable animation when removing the mask near the edge of the gas messes with gunplay and gets players killed. It’s incredibly frustrating to be caught in this during a key moment in a gunfight.
Balance
Okay, this is tricky to request. To give credit where it is due, developer Infinity Ward has implemented plenty of balance changes like nerfing the Grau and making loadout drops more expensive. It’s just that there isn’t much room for creativity with perks in the final circles. If you don’t have Cold-Blooded to stay off thermal sniper scopes, or EOD so you don’t get vaporized by C4 and RPGs, you’re at a considerable disadvantage. We’d like to see more risk/reward with loadout creativity than dominant tactics. But seriously, keep up the good work, Infinity Ward!
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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the biggest disruption to the entertainment industry in decades. Movies that were finished and about to be released have been pushed back months or shifted to digital home release, while those that were already in production have been left in limbo as they wait to restart filming. Meanwhile, theater chains face huge financial problems as they sit empty. As with all times of crisis, the art produced during this time has started to reflect the situation–Shazam director David Sandberg made the impressive lockdown horror short Shadowed, while Michael Bay is producing a “pandemic thriller” titled Songbird.
The new British horror film Host, which hits Shudder this week, was written, filmed, and finished during quarantine. It’s a found footage movie that plays out entirely on Zoom–writer/director Rob Savage and co-writers Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd never interacted in person with their actors, all of whom filmed their roles separately from their own homes. The film was then edited and completed remotely.
The basic set-up is one familiar to most of us over the past few months–with a twist. Six young friends–Haley (Haley Bishop), Radina (Radina Drandova), Teddy (Edward Linard), Jemma (Jemma Moore), Caroline (Caroline Ward), and Emma (Emma Louise Webb)–assemble one evening during the pandemic on Zoom, to drink, laugh, and talk about the weird situation the world finds itself in. Only this time, the meeting’s host, Haley, has invited a seventh guest–a middle-aged clairvoyant named Seylan (Seylan Baxter), who is there to lead the group through a virtual seance (presumably the novelty of online quizzes had worn off). The evening starts in lighthearted fashion–only Haley is taking the seance particularly seriously–but soon things get very strange and scary.
A pandemic found footage horror movie set on Zoom seems like such an obvious thing for quarantined filmmakers and actors to make in 2020 that it would be amazing if Host is the only one heading our way. But it’s easy to see why this is the one that has broken through first and is getting a high profile release on Shudder. It’s an effective piece of horror filmmaking that uses an experience that so many of us have had over the past few months to chilling effect.
Host is the latest in a series of recent tech-based genre movies that work best when viewed on the devices they are “set” on. Horror films and thrillers such as Unfriended, The Den, Open Windows, and Searching have all embraced the limitations of their format–usually set entirely within an app–and Host absolutely succeeds in this. Viewing it on the same laptop or device that you’ve already had dozens of Zoom meetings on this year is a genuinely unnerving experience. This isn’t some fictional social media app like in many of the aforementioned movies–this is literally Zoom. The faces on the screen could be any group of friends, and the relaxed, naturalistic performances from the actors immediately create a sense of believability that helps when things start getting scary.
As a horror movie, Host plays out like the greatest hits of found footage. It takes the scariest elements of genre favorites such as The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and REC, and delivers a shock every few minutes. From sudden unexplained noises, ghostly figures glimpsed in the darkness, ill-advised trips into the attic, and people pulled across rooms by unseen forces, it’s all here. There are no frights that horror fans won’t have experienced many times in the two decades since Blair Witch first terrified audiences. It’s definitely scary in places, but viewers looking for a more original spin on found footage might want to look elsewhere.
However, Host succeeds because it taps directly into the experience that millions of people have themselves lived through since March–and continue to live through. The filmmakers confront both the feelings of isolation for those living alone, and of those who miss their alone time, such as Radina, who’s feeling strained by her fragile relationship with a boyfriend she wasn’t planning to move in with any time soon. There is humor that many viewers will relate to–at one point the seance is interrupted by a grocery delivery–and Savage uses Zoom’s functionality in clever ways, including the countdown to the end of a free 40-minute meeting, and the inventive use of a virtual background.
The film’s length plays a big part too. It’s just 56 minutes long, ensuring that the tension never drops and the format never becomes tiring. In a different era, a movie this short might have struggled to get seen, as it’s much longer than a short film, and yet way too succinct for any kind of “normal” feature release. But in the streaming era, there’s absolutely no reason a movie has to be the traditional 90 minutes or longer. Just under an hour is exactly the right length in this case, and Savage deserves credit for not padding it out further.
Horror is often at its best when it mirrors the shifting world around us, whether dealing with issues such as race, consumerism, or the environment. Host probably won’t age well–both in terms of the technology and the fact it’s set very specifically in a (hopefully) highly unusual year. But at a time when so many pre-pandemic movies have little in common with what is happening right now, it’s refreshing to see a well-made, effective indie horror that works as both escapist entertainment and as a reflection of a shared experience.
The second Matrix movie may not have had the same impact as the first, but it’s still plenty interesting to look back on
Some remember 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded as an energetic sequel that expanded the world of The Matrix, upped the ante on the stunts and action, and pushed the story of the original in exciting new directions. Others recall it as an overstuffed, overwritten mess whose cool action scenes were overshadowed by lame dialogue, lack of focus, and a weird mud orgy.
Whatever place The Matrix 2 holds in your mind, it’s certainly not regarded in the same light as the influential sci-fi action classic the original is remembered as. Nevertheless, it’s still interesting to look back on–particularly with the news that The Matrix 4 is on the way.
We recently revisited the original Matrix to discover some new things we didn’t know about it, and we had a blast. Much like the Wachowskis, we’re trying to recapture that feeling with this sequel list. Once again, we watched every special feature on the series’ “Ultimate Matrix Collection” Blu-ray set and picked out the most interesting tidbits. Let us know how we did in the comments below–then check out everything we know about The Matrix 4 and the 34 dumbest moments from the Matrix sequels.
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1. The green Matrix code was designed to be more “visceral” in this one
During the film’s opening, visual effects supervisor John Gaeta says that the iconic green Matrix code was designed to be “more visceral” this time. “[Lana] and [Lilly] wanted to make a point that the code was like the fabric of life in the Matrix,” he says. “You could keep exponentially going into the detail in any given object and see more and more and more.”
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2. Six months pass between movies
It’s not explicitly stated in the movie, but according to Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix Reloaded picks up about six months after the original Matrix.
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3. Carrie-Anne Moss broke her leg two weeks into training
The actors trained for eight months for this movie. Two weeks in, Carrie-Anne Moss broke her leg–but she says Keanu’s dedication helped her keep going.
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4. Link is Tank and Dozer’s brother–kind of
In the special features, actor Harold Perrineau says that his character, Link, is Tank and Dozer’s brother. In Matrix canon, this is partially true–Link is married to Tank and Dozer’s sister, Zee, which makes him their brother-in-law.
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5. Tank’s offscreen “death” was caused by a salary dispute
References in this movie to Tank and Dozer’s deaths are confusing, because while Dozer was killed by Cypher in the first movie, Tank was definitely alive when the credits rolled. In reality, Tank was written out due to a salary dispute, which ultimately led to his actor, Marcus Chong, suing Warner Bros. for breaking a verbal agreement to recast him in the sequels, according to The Guardian.
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6. Jada Pinkett Smith was nine months pregnant during filming
You can note in scenes like this one that her torso is rarely in the frame. The actress says she was “really, really happy” to get the call to do these movies, despite her advanced pregnancy.
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7. The “mega city” was designed to look like Los Angeles, but larger
“The [Wachowskis] wanted the feeling of Los Angeles at night, but ten times bigger,” says digital matte painter Roger Gibbon.
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8. A lot of work went into Zion’s docking bay
Zion’s impressive docking bay area was meticulously designed. “I wanted to draw stuff so you could see how it worked, and so that if they built it, it wasn’t just impressions of things,” says conceptual designer Geofrey Darrow. “I would actually draw the lock mechanism. I tried to figure out how the pulleys work…the actual docks themselves, I tried to make them look sort of like aircraft carriers.”
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9. Morpheus and Lock have more history than what’s in the movie
That’s according to Laurence Fishburne, at least: “Harry Lennix, who plays Commander Lock–brilliantly, by the way–and I had a conversation: Do these two men know each other? Are they friends? Were they friends? We decided they were friends. And we figured out, for ourselves, that part of why they rub up against each other the wrong way is because one of them is pod-born, and the other one isn’t.”
He goes on to explain that, in the actors’ head-canon, Morpheus (pod-born) is jealous that Lock wasn’t bred to be a battery, and Lock is weirdly envious that he can never experience what the Matrix is actually like.
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10. Niobe apparently still loves Morpheus
That’s according to Jada Pinkett Smith: “I think Niobe loves Morpheus. I think she’s with Locke because of his status, you know, and I think she’s with Lock because he’s smart. And I think after being with Morpheus, it’s very difficult–she’s attracted to that power, that authority, and I think for Niobe and her personality, she needs that.”
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11. The dancers were captured 5 to 10 at a time on blue screen
The mud orgy (which visual effects supervisor John Gaeta incorrectly refers to as a “tribal rave”) was created by compositing many different shots of 5-10 dancers at a time, many from Oakland and San Francisco, dancing to electronic music on a blue screen set.
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12. Multiple people refer to Zion as a “womb”
Multiple people throughout the special features refer to the city of Zion as being designed to be womb-like, from the natural cave-like architecture (the Earth being humanity’s womb) to the warm, candle-lit color palette.
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13. Zion’s fashions were based on ancient clothes and mummies
“We imagined that everything they grow, they grow by hydroponics, because there’s water and heat, so we had to create clothing that could have been made from hemp or made from natural fibers, vegetable fibers,” says costume designer Kym Barrett. “So we went back into kind of ancient China and Mongolia and looked at a lot of the mummies that were buried in really beautifully woven, natural fibers.”
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14. Carrie-Anne Moss was stressed out about Trinity and Neo’s sex scene
“I was a bit worried about it and had fear around that area,” she says. “And the [Wachowskis] created, I thought, a really beautiful scene.”
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15. Zion’s residential pit was designed to resemble DNA
The bottomless pit in which Zion’s residents reside was also meticulously designed. “Within the structure of the bottomless pit, there’s a core, which is an elevator core, and then there are huge pipes that run down around that core,” says production designer Owen Paterson. “You get the kind of vibe that it’s a kind of like DNA strand. And we always imagined down inside the power plant, drainage that left the way Neo leaves when he’s dragged out of the pod and down through it and gets picked up by the Nebuchadnezzar. He went down what is basically a big DNA strand all the way down. These things are really subtle, but they’re there.”
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16. This fight has more “movements” than the entirety of the original film
That’s according to Keanu Reeves, at least. “It might actually be double,” the actor says. It took 9 weeks for Reeves and 12 stuntmen, who were trained to move and groomed to look like Hugo Weaving’s Smith, to shoot this fight.
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17. This character was played by the real world scholar who influenced the movies
The Wachowskis were heavily influenced by scholar and civil rights activist Cornel Ronald West, and they wrote a version of him into the sequel, then called West himself to portray the character. West also provides some of the audio commentary on the Blu-ray set.
“I was so honored when [they] said my own writings had been influential to some degree in the narrative that they put forward, the story that they were telling,” West says. “And when I received a call saying they both had actually written a character, Councillor West, and asked me to act, I said, ‘Well, you know, I have no acting experience, but I would be blessed to come on the set and try to give some life to this character that they had written about me.'”
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18. Jada Pinkett Smith had a scene from Enter the Matrix in mind during this conversation
Smith says there’s a scene in the 2003 video game Enter the Matrix, which was also written and directed by the Wachowskis, that directly influenced her character in this movie scene. “That was basically after the scene that’s in the video game, where [Lock] basically tells her that he actually made it so that she wouldn’t be chosen to go on this mission. She’s like, ‘What are you talking about? How could you? I’m a soldier before I’m your woman, before anything.’ So that’s basically the breakoff point.”
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19. The Merovingian was based on real history
According to Lambert Wilson, who plays the Merovingian, his character was named after a dynasty of French kings who were supposedly descended from the blood of Jesus Christ himself–hence the Merovingian’s superiority complex. Wilson also says he was embarrassed to use his natural French accent because he’s spent most of his life trying to get rid of it.
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20. Laurence Fishburne views the Merovingian as Morpheus’s counterpart
“The Merovingian, as I understand it, is Morpheus’s counterpart, as Smith is Neo’s opposite, the Merovingian is Morpheus’s opposite,” Fishburne says. “He’s not responsible to anyone. He does what he wants, when he wants to, how he wants to, and he really enjoys it.”
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21. The director of John Wick appears briefly in the special features
Over a decade before he’d direct Keanu Reeves in John Wick, Chad Stahelski–who you can very clearly see flipping through the air in this shot from the movie–served as “martial arts stunt coordinator” on The Matrix Reloaded. That’s a promotion from his work on the original Matrix, where he was simply Reeves’ stunt double. Stahelski appears briefly in the special features to discuss the chateau fight scene.
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22. The look of the Twins’ phasing powers was based on jellyfish
An unnamed effects person in the special features remarks that the Twins were inspired by jellyfish. “We’ve done a lot of investigation into jellyfish–the way you can see through parts of them, how the light affects them, and the edges you get,” she says. “It’s such an amazingly subtle thing, and it’s quite difficult to reproduce.”
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23. Carrie-Anne Moss says she went to “motion picture driving school” twice
“I went to motion picture driving school twice, and I have a diploma and I framed it and I put it on my wall, because that was fun,” the actress says. “I’m glad that I went, and I really appreciated the skills that I learned when it came down to shooting days because I was able to do some really cool stuff, and felt confident.”
“Carrie-Anne can drive her ass off,” Fishburne adds.
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24. There are 15,000 sentinels onscreen here
“We establish about 15,000 sentinels at any one time,” says visual FX supervisor (Zion unit) George Murphy. “That’s a pretty phenomenal number of creatures to keep track of, animate, render, light, make look like every one of them is doing the right thing.”
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25. The Architect’s actor was going to audition for another part
Helmut Bakaitis, who plays the Architect, was originally supposed to audition for an unidentified “councillor” (most likely Councillor Hamann, who wound up being played by Anthony Zerbe). “I suddenly got a different script and was asked to read for this completely other part, which completely bamboozled me, because of course I hadn’t read the whole script–I’d only read the scenes I was in,” Bakaitis chuckles. “‘The father of the Matrix,’ he says…and I thought, ‘Wow, this is good. Yeah, I can do that. I can do my cheap Orson Welles imitation and get paid for it.”
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26. We’ve seen this location once before
The Architect’s control room, seemingly new to Reloaded, was actually glimpsed in the original movie, according to visual effects supervisor John Gaeta: “There’s a shot of Neo where Neo gets interrogated and the beginning of the scene starts with us pushing through a bank of monitors. [The Architect’s control room] is the place where those monitors are.”
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27. Samsung made a Matrix phone
The filmmakers worked closely with Samsung to create the Samsung SPH-N270, colloquially known as “the Matrix phone.” It closely resembles those used in The Matrix Reloaded. Although it was a fully functional cell phone, it was never widely sold, and goes for high prices now on sites like eBay.
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Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company
Skateboarding video games are seeing a revival, between the return of Tony Hawk Remastered, the announcement of a new Skate from EA, and even quirky spins like Skatebird. The physics-based skateboarding sim Skater XL looks to scratch the itch of EA’s Skate franchise, and we’ve already found some great lines.
Check out the gameplay above to see some of our favorite moments from three maps: Downtown LA, School, and the daunting Mega Ramp. You can check out our best tricks and enjoy the oddly soothing sounds of skate wheels on pavement.
Skater XL is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. A Switch version is slated to release this year.
Though we can’t all travel like we used to, you can take a seat on your couch and fly through the catalogues of the streaming world. Shows like Dark and Money Heist have created buzz around the world, especially on social media. If you have Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime, you can watch (or binge through) some of the shows on our list. Most of them are still set to release new seasons this year. Watch as we go through international shows to add to your queue. Warning: songs from these titles such as “Bella Ciao” will be stuck in your head for days.
While Halo Infinite is largely exclusive to the Xbox family–launching on PC (Steam and Windows 10), Xbox One, and Xbox Series X this holiday season–that hasn’t stopped players from hoping the pivotal Xbox title would eventually arrive on other platforms. Though developer 343 Industries likely has no plans of porting Halo Infinite to something like the Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 4, a Dreams creator decided to take matters into their own hands by recreating a portion of the gameplay reveal.
Disarmed, a visual and audio creator, took to Dreams to bring Halo Infinite to the PlayStation 4 in stunning detail. Though the video is only 41 seconds long, it takes an improbable premise–what if Halo but PS4–and brings it to life. We see Master Chief holding the classic assault rifle while strutting through a lush forest. It’s extremely gorgeous and continues to show Dreams’ impressive power–even if there’s no way it’s happening.
In other Halo Infinite news, despite rumors circulating on the web, 343 Industries has confirmed that multiplayer will be available in the game on launch day. Though it has no definitive release date, Halo Infinite is apparently in “great shape” and will drop as an Xbox Series X launch title.
Figurines are cool, but figurines playing old Sega consoles are even cooler. Max Factory’s FigmaPlus Sega console accessories are now available to pre-order via Good Smile US, and they come with everything you need to get your Figma action figures playing old games. The entire set costs $35, ships January 2021, and comes with a Sega Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, Master System, and Game Gear as well as a game for each and hands that can hold the respective controllers.
Each mini console is based on its Japanese release, so your Genesis is actually a Mega Drive and your Sega Saturn is in grey, black, and blue. Each of the five consoles also comes with a controller and its own game that can be taken out of its case and inserted into the system. These games include Sonic the Hedgehog for the Mega Drive, Virtua Fighter for Saturn, Space Channel 5 for Dreamcast, Alex Kidd in Miracle World for Master System, and Puyo Puyo for Game Gear.
One thing to note is that the pictures show several different figures playing these consoles on a TV and entertainment center. These don’t come with the set, but you can snag the featured set from Hobby Link Japan, a reliable seller of action figures, models, and more.
As a pre-order bonus, Good Smile US is also throwing in an extra Mega Drive controller and hand part set, so two of your favourite Figma figures can play together–too bad Sonic the Hedgehog doesn’t have a two-player mode. The Sega mini consoles set seems like it would be a fun way to pose some of your figures. I’d personally love to see Sekiro or Link play a Genesis or Dreamcast.
If you’re interested in more retro gaming goodness, then be sure to check out our retro gamer’s guide. It covers everything from retro-style controllers you can use on modern platforms to different ways of playing old consoles on new TVs.
