Welcome to the weekend! The big highlight we have today is the MacBook sale happening at Best Buy. Two excellent models are on sale right now, but that’s not all in the PC space. Tons of great prebuilt PCs are also available containing the new 3080 and 3090 graphics card. These graphics cards are tough to find outside of prebuilt machines, so if you really want one, this could be a way to get it.
It’s morphin’ time! Hasbro is taking the Power Rangers slogan a bit more seriously by resurrecting a classic toy line for a brand-new generation of fans. The Power Rangers Retro-Morphin figures allow you to switch between the characters from Angel Grove into the Putty-fighting superheroes you know and love.
Revealed at Hasbro PulseCon, the line of toys won’t be available in stores until Spring 2021. However, you can get a first look at them here. Included in the new set are Jason, the Red Ranger; Billy, the Blue Ranger; Zack, the Black Ranger; and Kimberly, the Pink Ranger. Check them out below.
Much like the original figures, all you have to do to “morph” the toy is press the toy’s belt buckle. Each figure will retail for $10 USD, and they all come with a personal accessory, like Jason’s Power Sword or Kimberly’s Power Bow. These figures are all available for pre-order at Walmart, which will begin at 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET on September 26.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity was revealed just a few weeks ago and is coming out in November. Ahead of its release, Koei Tecmo held a live-stream during TGS 2020 to reveal some new information on the game, show off 13 minutes of brand new gameplay, and unveil Impa as a playable character.
But we uncovered some other info that may not have been as clear, such as details on how the Sheikah Slate might work between characters in gameplay, minor characters that might become playable, and how Age of Calamity connects to both Breath of the Wild and the original Hyrule Warriors.
Age of Calamity is both a spin-off and prequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it’s set to release on November 20 exclusively for Nintendo Switch.
At a special online presentation during Tokyo Game Show 2020 today, publisher Level-5 and developer Netmarble showed a few minutes of gameplay of their upcoming mobile RPG Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds. The entire presentation was later uploaded to YouTube with English subtitles (“for a limited time” according to the official Twitter account).
Cross Worlds is a departure from the previous Ni no Kuni games, which used a traditional fantasy setting. Instead, Cross Worlds has a science-fiction twist: the player is a regular person in the “real” world of Ichi no Kuni (literally “one country”) who is beta-testing a new virtual reality game called Soul Diver, which takes them into the world of Ni no Kuni.
Five player classes have been revealed for Ni no Kuni Cross Worlds: Swordsman, Witch, Rogue, Destroyer and Engineer. In today’s online presentation, popular Japanese YouTuber Masuo was able to begin a game as the Swordsman, although his in-game character looked different than the default version, suggesting there will be character customization options (but none were shown). In the game inside the game, his character was greeted by an AI character called Rania. A sudden glitch in the system replaces Rania with a “real” version of the same woman, but before they can explain the situation everything goes dark.
The Swordsman awakes in a burning city greeted by a small imp-like creature called Cluu, but the action starts immediately as the player must swipe the screen to avoid a falling tower. After a brief encounter with a dragon wearing a giant amulet, Cluu directs the player to head towards the castle to aid the Queen. This gives us a glimpse at the control interface for Cross Worlds: A virtual slide pad on the left of the screen moves the player, while the camera can be adjusted by swiping the screen.
The Swordsman enters combat, which is controlled with a circle of buttons on the right side of the screen; a big “attack” button is in the center, and Masuo was hammering it to slash the monsters. Smaller buttons around the attack button were not explained but appear to be special abilities which have a cooldown timer before becoming active again. Debris blocks the way to the Queen and the only way through is to pick up a bomb and throw it through contextual button presses and swipes.
Once he reaches the Queen and interrupts her death at the hands of a towering villain, the player discovers she is the woman he met when he first entered Ni no Kuni. At this point the demo cut off, but other trailers have shown the player travelling to Evermore on a quest to save the kingdom.
It should be said that unlike previous Ni no Kuni mobile titles, Cross Worlds looks on par with the console releases of the past: Despite being entirely 3D creations, the characters resemble 2D drawings from famed Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli, which was a collaborator on the first Ni no Kuni; indeed, during the presentation, Netmarble Japan CEO Yuji Endo said that the new game recreates Ghibli’s world from the original. In footage during today’s presentation, a variety of lush environments were shown, from forests to deserts and fields to cities.
Two other gameplay modes were featured in today’s presentation, Kingdom and Team Arena. Kingdom Mode is a cooperative multiplayer mode where players can explore the city and countryside together. Players also have a familiar who trails behind them and can “help them on their journey” though no skills were shown; one touch of a button beneath them can swap the familiar for another. During today’s video, the on-air hosts were shown chasing wild animals and capturing them, though earlier footage showed competitive games like soccer or dice.
In Team Arena, six players were able to compete in a 3-on-3 combat mini-game. Rather than a test of strength, the actual goal is to collect creatures called “higgledies” inside the arena. Players can attack each other and throw items to make their opponents lose their higgledies, but even if they are knocked out they will come back in a few seconds. The only way to win is to collect the most higgledies and evade the other players for 10 seconds.
Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds has no formal release date, but previous announcements suggest it will be out in Japan before the year ends. No foreign releases or localization have yet been confirmed either, but the presence of fully subtitled English and Chinese videos on the official Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds channel suggests international versions may be released later.
During a special livestream event at Tokyo Game Show 2020, D3 Publisher producer Nobuyuki Okajima outlined what to expect from the upcoming Earth Defense Force spin-off title, World Brothers, and we got a brief look at the fully fledged Earth Defense Force 6.
World Brothers will be released in Japan on December 24 for the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch, while an “early 2021″ release is planned for other territories. In a departure from past EDF games, which had semi-realistic giant insects attacking the planet, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is entirely made of voxels. Even the Earth itself is now a cube, or at least it was until the Dark Legion arrived from space and blew it to bits. That was not the end of the battle though; the voxel Earth still exists as pieces floating in space, each segment a tiny environment unto itself.
Okajima played through the game’s tutorial level live on the stream (which you can watch below), where a gruff military commander on-screen explained the above backstory and charged the player with becoming an EDF commander and building their own squad to fight the invaders and rescue what’s left of the Earth. His default soldier was a Ranger but after shooting some ants in Manhattan he found a Wing Diver unconscious on the ground. Rescuing fallen allies adds to your squad: Players can have up to four soldiers in their party and switch between them instantly with the D-pad.
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers will include “over 100” different characters, including a variety of fighters from past EDF games such as Jet Lifters, Air Raiders and Fencers. Given the theme of this new game, there will also be a variety of new “brothers and sisters” based on cultures from around the globe (sorry, cube) who can become allies. Okajima showed still images that included a Cowboy Brother with a six-shooter, a Pharaoh Sister carrying an ankh, and a masked El Dorado Brother from South America.
Every character in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers has their own ability (mapped to the L2 button on PS4). For the Ranger, it is a dodge roll with a brief cooldown timer. For the Wing Diver, it is a jetpack that allows limited flight. Given that the Earth is in pieces, it is possible to fall off the edge of the stages in World Brothers, so Okajima recommended always including at least one flyer in your party to avoid plummeting into space.
Okajima also showed how multiplayer works in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers. Online play supports up to four people at once, each controlling their own squad. On PlayStation 4, offline splitscreen play for two players is available, but Switch players must each have their own console and copy of the game to team up with friends. A special “double enlistment pack” for Switch will be sold in Japan bundling two copies of the game together at a slight discount for this reason.
With the boxy visuals that are clearly reminiscent of Minecraft, Earth Defense Force World Brothers is a kid-friendly version of the 17 year old bug-shooting franchise. With that history in mind, Okajima hopes that World Brothers can be a game that is both welcoming to beginners and “nostalgic” for established fans. He pointed out that people who grew up with EDF might be parents by now and suggested that playing World Brothers together could be a family activity – though he stressed that the game is not explicitly “a kids’ game” (in Japan it is rated B, making it ideal for “12-year-olds and above”).
The stream ended with a brief discussion of Earth Defense Force 6, the next proper sequel in the series which is slated for 2021. Early screenshots were shown, which you can see above, and Okajima explained that Earth Defense Force 6 will take place three years after the events of Earth Defense Force 5, which came out for Steam and PlayStation 4 in 2017. Civilization has almost entirely collapsed and the human race is near extinction. There are so few people left that anyone can be a member of the EDF, not just soldiers.
After the official TGS presentation ended, Okaijima appeared on a segment of D3 Publisher’s own livestream (guest starring famed video game pitchman Takahashi Meijin) to show actual gameplay footage of Earth Defense Force 6. While no platforms for EDF6 have been announced yet, he appeared to be playing the game with a DualShock 4 controller.
On screen, the Earth was indeed in total ruin. Okajima played as a character in full military gear, but some of his squadmates were civilians wearing normal clothes and talking about their past professions. With the invasion of Earth supposedly completed, he and his team were on patrol looking for aliens who were left behind on Earth by their fleet. They eventually found some giant frogs walking amongst the rubble and a battle began.
Coming after the bright and colorful aesthetics of Earth Defense Force: World Brothers, watching EDF6 in action is jarringly different. It’s not “realistic” because the aliens look like giant frogs, but when hit they bleed, and hits to their limbs can sever their arms or legs. These enemies are much smarter than the drones seen in World Brothers: They have weapons of their own and, rather than charging at the player, they tend to run for cover behind fallen buildings. However, Okajima showed that using a rocket launcher can demolish what’s left of the scenery, so the aliens couldn’t hide for long.
When asked about the release date of Earth Defense Force 6, Okajima said that the game is still in development and expressed his hope that it would be finished in 2021. However, he warned that it would not be early in the year and might be “closer to New Year’s”.
In Scarlet Nexus – Bandai Namco’s anticipated title that is being developed for current-gen and next-gen consoles as well as PC – players will slay over-the-top monsters by combining sword attacks with extra-sensory powers in an insane SF “brain-punk” world. In IGN’s Gamescom preview, we called it a “stylish, flashy, and edgy action-RPG”. However, during IGN Japan’s Tokyo Game Show 2020 interview with producer Keita Iizuka and director Kenji Anabuki, we learned that there might be more to the RPG side of Scarlet Nexus than meets the eye.
With Anabuki having worked on the Tales series for many years, this might not come as a surprise, and Iizuka says that while the game’s setting and battle system are completely new, he believes that Scarlet Nexus will be highly enjoyable for fans of the RPG genre. “Until now, we have mainly shown the game’s action parts, but of course there is also a rich story and you will be fighting along with other party members in typical RPG fashion.”
“Since my origins as a developer lie in the RPG genre, I wanted to make sure to implement elements that I am experienced and confident with. So you can expect to enjoy story, character customization, communication between characters and such as well,” Anabuki told IGN Japan.
Furthermore, Anabuki explains that the game will also incorporate exploration elements in which protagonist Yuito Sumeragi has to put his psychokinesis into practice outside of battle as well. All of this doesn’t change the fact that Scarlet Nexus’ battle system is fast-paced real-time action, but Anabuki mentions that it is balanced so that even players not used to playing action games should be able to enjoy and beat the game.
You won’t be able to completely customize your own party, but you will be able to decide which party members you want to learn more about. By communicating with these characters, you can learn their backstories while they will obtain new abilities, which Yuito Sumeragi can use himself as well through a system called “brain link”.
During IGN Japan’s TGS live show, Iizuka and Anabuki also explained how Yuito Sumeragi’s psychokinesis allows the player to smash objects as big as a bus into your enemy, how the creepy looking monsters called the Others came to be, why they wanted to create a game that incorporates supernatural powers in the first place, and much more.
Scarlet Nexus is in development for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
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Esra Krabbe is an editor at IGN Japan. Follow him on Twitter here!
In a special livestream presented today at Tokyo Game Show 2020, Koei Tecmo revealed live gameplay of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity on the Nintendo Switch, giving the world a glimpse of what kind of action to expect from Link, young Impa, and the four Champions of Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the 2017 Nintendo game that this title serves as a prequel for.
Play began with “The Battle of Hyrule Field” as Link, clad in armor instead of his blue Champion’s Garb from the previous game, stood surrounded by the royal Hyrulian army. In Dynasty Warriors style, different character portraits popped into the corner of the screen delivering lore and directives. Link charged forward at full speed with no sign of a stamina meter in sight, offering no indication that he needs to walk at all when he can run everywhere – or surf, as a tap of a button sent him rocketing forward sliding atop his shield, knocking back enemies by the dozens.
Instead of a single attack button, Hyrule Warriors offers a choice of “regular” and “strong” attacks with the Y and X buttons, respectively. This being a Dynasty Warriors game, every attack Link used has huge range; his first combo in the video scattered eight Bokoblins. A running counter in the corner kept track of how many monsters were slain during the demo. It surpassed 600 in just a few minutes of fighting.
Nearly all of Link’s combat abilities from Breath of the Wild were shown to be in Hyrule Warriors. A timely dodge will trigger a slow-motion opportunity to rush an opponent for multiple hits. Pulling out his bow while in mid-air likewise slows the game down for an arrow rush. Using the Sheikah Slate, he can throw bombs, freeze enemies with Stasis, and create columns of Ice with Cryonis.
Hyrule Warriors also gives Link new ways to fight. The spin attack from Breath of the Wild is now a “special attack” which nearly clears the screen. When fighting certain stronger enemies like a Moblin, a “weak point” can appear on screen as a hexagon. Attacking during this time lowers their health and shaves down the hexagon; once it is gone, Link can execute a special “Smash” attack which should end the fight. New “counter” abilities also allow him to toss multiple bombs in succession or summon an ice pillar to stun charging foes.
The biggest surprise of the stream was when Link happened upon a young Impa, seen as an old woman in Breath of the Wild, running from monsters. He rescued her, and in doing so triggered the activation of a small, egg-like Guardian Robot which seemingly triggered a tower to burst out of the ground. The development staff declined to explain this sequence. However, a few minutes later an on-screen message announced Impa was now playable. With a push of a button, the action switched to her. Impa in Hyrule Warriors moves like a ninja, with the ability to create shadowy doubles of herself and slice enemies on screen so fast that she disappears.
In a separate trailer shown after the live gameplay, footage of the four Champions in battle was shown featuring some of their special combat abilities. Mipha summoned a wave of water to wash foes away. Revali was adept with a bow. Urbosa wielded bolts of lightning. Daruk, besides using Stasis as Link does, could curl into a ball with his Protection shield to bowl over monsters.
While today’s live stream was focused on the action, it was impossible not to notice how different the world looks in this game set 100 years before Breath of the Wild. Hyrule Castle is still Hyrule Castle, untouched by Ganon. As Link ran around there were more castles and shops and signs of an active society everywhere, even as monsters appeared.
Hyrule Warriors launches for Switch on November 20 this year. While the members of the development team were generally tight-lipped about answering questions during gameplay, producer Yosuke Hayashi said that “more new info” would be revealed on Sunday, September 27 during a separate livestream.
The sixth episode of The Boys: Season 2 is an important one, with X2: X-Men United’s Shawn Ashmore making his full debut as Lamplighter. This mysterious superhero has been at the heart of one of the show’s bigger mysteries, and now fans finally know why Lamplighter vanished from the public eye, what he’s been up to and what exactly went down that fateful night he first clashed with Butcher’s team.
IGN was able to chat with Ashmore over the phone to find out more about what drew him to the character and the fun of playing a hero who couldn’t be more different from the X-Men franchise’s Iceman. Read on to learn more about how the TV series changes Lamplighter and the challenges of playing the character, but beware of spoilers for The Boys: Season 2, Episode 6!
As faithful as the TV series is to the comic book version of The Boys in terms of the basic plot, it tends to introduce some pretty significant changes when it comes to the individual characters and their respective back-stories. That’s certainly been the case with Season 2’s biggest new addition, Stormfront, and it remains true with Lamplighter as well.
In the comics, Lamplighter is depicted as more or less an analogue to Green Lantern. He’s a hero who can control and shape fire in the same way Hal Jordan forms constructs out of his ring’s energy. That Green Lantern influence isn’t quite as obvious in the show, in part because we mostly see Lamplighter as a retired hero who carries his trusty lighter rather than his flaming staff. In general, The Seven are a pretty direct riff on the Justice League in the comics, and slightly less so in the TV series.
One of the darkest reveals in the comic (and one of the biggest changes between the comic and TV series) comes as readers learn The Seven tried and failed to stop the 9/11 terrorist attacks due to their own selfishness and incompetence. Even though the US government covers up the truth, Lamplighter retires shortly after. Butcher and his original team decide to blackmail The Seven with the threat of revealing the truth to the public. In response, Lamplighter takes it upon himself to kill Gregory Mallory’s grandchildren as a way of intimidating The Boys into silence.
In either version of the story, The Boys have a special reason for hating Lamplighter.
That merely escalates the feud between the two teams. To keep the peace and prevent The Seven’s public image from being soiled, Homelander turns over Lamplighter to Butcher and his team, who proceed to savagely beat the hero before shooting him and throwing his body out of a plane. However, Vought recovers the body and restores Lamplighter to life, albeit as a glorified zombie with no higher brain functions.
While the TV series retains some of these elements, the execution is much different. A series of flashbacks show Mallory and her team attempted to blackmail Lamplighter into becoming their mole within the Seven. Instead, Vought dispatches their creation to assassinate Mallory. Or so he thinks. He instead winds up murdering Mallory’s grandchildren. The guilt of that act compels him to retire, and he takes up a new role in overseeing Vought’s test subjects in a psychiatric institute. In the end, Lamplighter helps his enemies survive the superhuman jailbreak, and Mallory reluctantly agrees to spare his life. It’s a far more noble end to his story compared to the comic.
From Iceman to Lamplighter
Ashmore told us that as a longtime superhero and comic book fan, he was eager to be involved with The Boys after watching Season 1. In fact, he tested for several different Season 2 roles before keying in on the idea of playing Lamplighter, a character about as different from Iceman as possible.
“I actually auditioned for several characters on the show, but when Lamplighter came up, I thought, ‘Man, this would be cool to sort of come back to do something in the superhero space that’s completely the opposite of what people think of me as Bobby Drake Iceman and in that area.’ So I just thought it’d be fun. I thought it’d be different. And it’s exciting to be on the show, but also to come back to the superhero genre and do something totally different.”
Ashmore suspects that appealing role-reversal is what helped him land the part in the first place, with showrunner Eric Kripke and his team exploring a very different side of an actor made famous by the X-Men movies.
Ashmore’s latest superhero role is certainly an ironic shift from his X-Men days.
“I haven’t really talked to Eric about it directly, but I’m pretty sure that knowing The Boys and knowing the tone and the attitude that they take, that was definitely a big part of potentially them casting me or thinking about me for the role is that it’s just unexpected,” said Ashmore. “And sort of in the face of what the normal thing would be for a superhero show. And I love that. So yeah, it was fun to be a completely different type of character in the same genre.”
That all being said, while there’s a definite irony in the idea of Ashmore playing a character with the exact same powers as Iceman’s nemesis Pyro, Lamplighter wasn’t specifically intended to be a spoof of the X-Men movies. As Ashmore explains, the show’s interpretation of the character had already been established before he auditioned for the role.
“I mean, it seems to me that that kind of makes sense,” said Ashmore. “But again, Lamplighter was Lamplighter before I was cast, so it wasn’t as if they were like, ‘Oh, we’ll cast Shawn, who people know as Iceman, and then make Lamplighter a fire character,’ or more of that. So I think it was just the direction that they took. And then again, I think my casting sort of poked fun a little bit at the whole situation.”
As we’ve explored, Lamplighter’s story takes a very different turn in the TV series versus the comics. Where’s he’s mostly a figure of ridicule in the source material, Episode 6 works to give Lamplighter depth and explore how his shared rivalry with Frenchie is one built mostly on a misunderstanding. This episode humanizes Lamplighter in a way the comic doesn’t.
“To me, it was very clear when I read even the sides for the character and then when I read the script, what their intention with Lamplighter was,” said Ashmore. “To stir up the pot with The Boys, to bring back this character that had such an effect on all of them, from Mallory on down, and Frenchie obviously, and everybody that was involved at the time. So that made sense to me… This was a great way into where Vought was taking this experimentation and how they’re using V and how they were going about that.
Ashmore continued, “To me, it made really good sense in the second season to have this character pop in, stir up the pot with the boys, threaten Vought, and sort of go from there.”
But humanized or not, Lamplighter is clearly a very dark and flawed person in any version of this story. We were curious if Ashmore had trouble getting into the mindset of the character and inhabiting a world where “superheroes” are often little more than sociopathic mass-murders. How tough is that process?
“Surprisingly easy, mostly because the material is so good,” said Ashmore. “And again, I think what works with The Boys is that our supes, they’re the villains, I guess you could say, quote-unquote, but they’re really not. They’re just people, flawed people, and Lamplighter’s no different. He’s done horrible things. He is a murderer. He’s done some very, very bad things. But what was interesting to me is that I don’t think that Lamplighter’s played as a villain and I certainly didn’t look at him like that. He was just a human being who has this ability who got caught up with Vought and with this fame and success, and just got caught up in these trappings and in this machine. And then everything else that happens sort of happened. I don’t think that he was an evil person. He’s just done some very evil things.”
Ashmore continued, “And so I think we see both sides of Lamplighter. It’s not straightforward, like, ‘Well, he’s the bad guy and now the boys are coming after him.’ He’s had to sort of atone and look at the things that he’s done now that he’s not in The Seven. Now that the machine that protected him and built him up is gone, now he’s left to look at what he did and who he is. I thought that was interesting. And that’s how I approached the character. And that’s how I tried to play the character. Not that he’s just this evil sup and that he’s a sociopath and a murderer. He is all those things, but there’s a lot more to him.”
This encounter with Lamplighter also promises to have a lingering effect on The Boys and Frenchie in particular. Frenchie’s decision to save Lamplighter’s life is a reminder of the true enemy he and his friends are trying to destroy.
“I always looked at it that The Boys are fighting Vought more than they’re fighting the supes,” said Ashmore. “And obviously Butcher has it out for Homelander for a very specific, personal reason, but the rest of the team is fighting the system more than they’re fighting the supes. And I think as we’re seeing this season so far, aside from characters like Stormfront and Homelander, the other supes are flawed and trying to make amends and in a free-fall, everybody from A-Train to The Deep and Queen Maeve. We’re all seeing the other sides to these characters.”
Ashmore continued, “And so I think that this will open the door a little more, potentially, for The Boys to see the other side of their enemy. Whether that means they’re going to stop fighting them or not, I don’t think that that’s true, but I think it will give a bit of insight into what these people – the supes – were put through to become who they are and what they’ve become.”
(Note: This post contains spoilers for Playdead’s Inside.)
When publisher Limited Run Games first revealed the $150 “Chex Warrior” edition of the infamous 1996 shooter Chex Quest–a free total conversion of Doom originally distributed in boxes of the eponymous cereal–reaction ran the gamut from strained confusion to outright enthusiasm. While it might seem like a bizarre tribute to an advertising relic of the ’90s, Limited Run’s founder Josh Fairhurst offered a simple explanation for the move: He just really liked Chex Quest as a kid.
“There are definitely times where I take a gamble on something that I think is really cool with the knowledge that it may not make money,” he says. “Chex Quest is a great example of that.”
Limited Run’s core business of providing physical releases for traditionally digitally-minded indie games grew out of such a gamble. When Fairhurst’s game studio Mighty Rabbit was in financial trouble, he leveraged the last of the studio’s funds and took out a loan to create a small run of physical copies for their Vita game Breach & Clear. Though Fairhurst hoped that the studio would make at least enough money to continue operating off the production, he also had a personal reason for the decision. “It felt right for me to take a game that I had made and make it physical, because if my company went out of business, at least having that physical game would be a reminder that hey, we actually did things,” he explains. “Our hard work wouldn’t be lost to the march of time, or services getting shut down.”
When that production run sold out in a scant two hours, however, Fairhurst realized he had stumbled across a lucrative new business model, and Limited Run has grown from there to over 500 releases in under five years. The majority of the company’s output remains physical releases of hit indie games like Streets of Rage 4 or reissues of classics like Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, and Fairhurst is absolutely clear that the success of these less-risky projects allows the company to indulge its more offbeat impulses from time to time. These dalliances sometimes only break even–in particular, Fairhurst says Limited Run’s PC releases have a tendency to do less well than their console counterparts–but they can also prove to be unexpected successes.
Over the past five years, there’s been a significant shift in the way that many people buy and consume games. The statistics tell the story: In the first half of 2019, Sony reported that digital sales of retail games had finally eclipsed physical purchases 53% to 47%, around the same time that GamesIndustry.biz reported that several regions in Europe now purchase a majority of their games digitally. While these numbers seem to suggest a gradual move away from physical copies of games, the reality is that there exists a market of die-hard collectors who covet limited editions and gewgaws that serve as tokens of their undying fandom.
Lately, however, some of the small companies that put out these expansive physical editions have been greenlighting unconventional or unusual projects in an attempt to stand out in the market. The results are a fascinating reflection of what sort of games get to be regarded as “classics,” as well as what kinds of goodies fans are hoping for when they plonk down hundreds of dollars for a special edition of a beloved game. However, the very nature of these limited editions can sometimes cause unruly fans to react with vitriol when they fail to snap up the package they want–and the results can be quite unpleasant.
When Electronic Arts approached Limited Run about doing a limited edition of Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, as a longtime fan of the franchise, Fairhurst was enthusiastic about tackling it. However, given that the series hasn’t had a major entry since 2012, he was concerned that the production run might only break even. Instead, fans flocked to it in droves, and it ended up becoming Limited Run’s top-selling item of all time. To Fairhurst, the whole episode demonstrated an important lesson: It’s impossible to know how fans will react to these sorts of announcements, so it’s best to go with what you personally enjoy.
“I would say there’s a strong gut component to what we’re doing,” he says. “Most of the time, an opportunity will come our way, and we’ll be able to look at the name and just think, well, it’ll likely at least break even, and if it ends up being profitable, that’s great.”
Jon Gibson of fellow boutique publisher iam8bit prefers a different metaphor: He calls their decision-making process “a sort of alchemy.” Born out of a 2005 art show that served as a gallery space for artists obsessed with the intersection of ’80s pop culture and old-school gaming, Gibson says that iam8bit focuses on creating merch that is interpretive and respectful rather than simply “regurgitating” an existing brand.
Last year, iam8bit partnered with RealDolls–yes, the California-based company that makes so-called “love dolls,” which are lauded by enthusiasts for their human-like verisimilitude–to produce one of the most bizarre pieces of video game merch ever devised: A silicone model of the monstrous, amorphous “Huddle” from the end of the 2014 horror game Inside.
According to iam8bit’s co-owner, Amanda White, the idea of putting together a rubber or silicone model for one of their collector’s editions actually predates Inside entirely. For years now, she’s been trying to collaborate with friends who work at Sinvention, a Canadian company that specializes in high-end bondage gear and other sex toys. Her associate suggested Realdolls as the ultimate in “silicone artisans,” and the partnership ended up producing the model that fans could buy for $375.
“I definitely still think there’s a market for a video game-related sex toy,” Gibson says, laughing. “We’re going to find the right project for that someday.” (Whether Rez‘s infamous “trance vibrator” counts as a pioneer in the field depends on who you ask.)
Not every one of iam8bit’s releases can be as outlandish as that, but Gibson says they do try to push the boundaries as much as they can, if only quietly. He says that fans often question their inclusion of Genesis games Aladdin and The Lion King in their Legacy Cartridge Collection, since movie tie-in games are largely considered subpar at best among enthusiasts. In Gibson’s opinion, however, these two games are historically important, because they represent the first time that game developers were able to collaborate with filmmakers before the movies being adapted even came out, rather than slapping a game together based on secondhand knowledge and assets.
“Lion King was a technical marvel in its day,” Gibson says. “Just look at the parallaxing in the Simba’s stampede sequence. That’s an amazing feat of gameplay engineering. Achieving that in the crunched time-frame of a movie game is very impressive… It doesn’t matter if these games are rare, they are seminal pieces of gaming history, they were important to the evolution of the industry, just in a way that isn’t as appreciated as Street Fighter 2 or Mega Man 2.”
Both Gibson and Fairhurst say they often get complaints about the price of their reproduction cartridges, which sometimes come in at more than $100. Though Fairhurst says he doesn’t necessarily blame younger fans for balking at the price, he points out that small batches of high-quality cartridges are expensive to produce, often coming in at up to $25 per cart, and that doesn’t include packaging or any extras. (As many retro gamers will tell you, that’s why some cartridge games would retail for $70 or $80 back in the day.)
Fairhurst personally feels that some customers have a tendency to hold grudges against the company based on experiences with it they had years ago. For example, when Limited Run partnered with a developer to create a limited edition for the infamous FMV slasher Night Trap, it made a very limited quantity, assured that the demand for a game that regularly shows up on “worst of all time” lists would be mild at best. Instead, Night Trap sold out in less than a minute.
“I definitely still think there’s a market for a video game-related sex toy. We’re going to find the right project for that someday.”
“People still hold that against us,” he says. “We get hate messages about it to this day. They hate us with a burning passion. People don’t understand that we’ve changed our model, that our runs aren’t as limited anymore, that most of our games are sold on a pre-order model, but they still hate us because they missed out on Night Trap.”
Both companies say the ire of collectors can gather on the most surprising of shores. Gibson and White were caught up in the toxic firestorm that surrounded the original release of No Man’s Sky, and a mob of aggrieved gamers sent them negative messages, as well as death threats.
“The product resonated with fans; we sold a ton of those statues and collector’s editions,” Gibson says. “But we got really nasty phone calls. They thought that we were a proxy for the developer. It really turned Amanda and me off humanity for a bit, I’ll say that.”
Meanwhile, Fairhurst says he received quite a bit of hate mail from customers seeking the fake NES game Galf that the company included with the Switch version of the sports RPG Golf Story. Based on a mini-game from Golf Story itself, Fairhurst describes it as “essentially a joke version of NES Golf.” “You can get a copy of that on eBay for $5,” he says, laughing. “To be so upset about what is essentially a clone of that game with some weird humor in it, that to me is next-level. It’s unfortunately not that unusual, though.”
Though Fairhurst says he’s never quite sure what will be the next offbeat collector’s edition his company comes out, he has one in mind that will eclipse them all: the abysmal 3DO game Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, a semi-pornographic visual novel that you might describe as the video game equivalent of a slightly-smutty PowerPoint presentation.
“I’ve been trying to get the rights to that game for like three to four years now,” he says. “I’d like to bring it to Switch and PS4, and do an elaborate collector’s edition, because it’s such a morbid curiosity. People need to see how awful it is.”
