Tingle seems to love the ocean. How else to explain his steady presence in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where the peculiar sprite continually pops up to aid (or hamper) Link’s quest with items like the Tingle Tuner? Heck, he even has his very own island.
“I was helping out on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker when it was still in its planning phase, but at the same time I was working on Star Fox Adventures with Rare, and I ended up having to focus on the latter,” Imamura explained, laughing. “So If you ever wondered why Tingle appears so often in Wind Waker, now you know why.”
Tingle had already appeared in Majora’s Mask and Oracle of Ages, but his stint in Wind Waker seemed to cement him in Zelda lore. He went on to appear in several more games, including Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland for the Nintendo, which never made it to North America.
Imamura was Tingle’s main creator, and it’s become a big part of his legacy. Indeed, when Imamura announced his retirement earlier this year, many sites referred to him as “Tingle’s Creator” first despite having a large hand on games ranging from Star Fox 64 to F-Zero GX.
Tingle himself remains a fairly divisive figure among North American fandom. Here at IGN, we hated him enough that we ran a “Die, Tingle, Die! Die!” campaign back in 2004. In Japan, though, he is said to have garnered a cult following, with Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland producer Kensuke Tanabe expressing interest in one day making another Tingle game.
“I know that people cannot stand Tingle. But to me, that challenge is: Could I take this character that is so reviled in the West and just [do] a complete turnaround and make him a beloved, fun character? The idea of that really just gets me going. I know we have made a Tingle game in the past, but maybe at some point down the road,” Tanabe told GamesBeat in 2013.
Tingle’s most recent appearance was in Hyrule Warriors, where he appeared in the Majora’s Mask DLC pack. His costume was also available via DLC in Breath of the Wild.
As for Imamura, he’s now departed the company where he spent more than 30 years working alongside giants like Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata. He is now a professor at the International Professional University of Technology in Osaka, where he is teaching CG animation and video game development and is currently working on a manga.
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Kat Bailey is a Senior Editor at IGN. She really has nothing against Tingle.
Takaya Imamura, the now-retired Nintendo artist and designer who helped create The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and characters like Captain Falcon and Fox McCloud, has said that while F-Zero isn’t dead, it is a series that is “hard to bring back” without a “grand idea.”
Imamura also delved deep into the development of F-Zero GX, which took inspiration from Daytona USA and was developed by SEGA’s Amusement Vision alongside Nintendo.
“I think it started with [Amusement Vision’s] Toshihiro Nagoshi proposing the project to Miyamoto,” says Imamura. “I really liked Daytona USA (which Nagoshi produced), so I was honored to work with him. We had an arcade system board called Triforce which was based on the GameCube’s architecture, so when Nagoshi proposed doing an arcade version of F-Zero, I was really happy, as I had always been a fan of arcade games.
“Back then, Nagoshi was the top of Amusement Vision, a subsidiary studio of Sega. I don’t think many people outside the company were ever allowed inside the actual development offices. Companies don’t usually let people inside their development offices, but they showed me the arcade cabinets they were working on, which has become a special memory for me,” recalls Imamura. “Nagoshi had a professional darts machine in his office, which I thought was very stylish. In those days, Nagoshi still had long hair, but he was already quite imposing.”
While he discussed F-Zero, our interview with Imamura also touches upon his work on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Star Fox 64, how he got into the video game industry, and much more.
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Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
After 32 years, Takaya Imamura has left Nintendo. Imamura was a key development team member on classic games like Star Fox, F-Zero and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and his retirement became a topic of conversation throughout the industry when he announced it on Twitter back in January. IGN was lucky enough to sit down with Imamura for a lengthy talk about his career with the legendary video game company.
As of today, Imamura has become a professor at the International Professional University of Technology in Osaka, a new college that opened this April. While teaching CG Animation and video game development, Imamura is working on his own manga in his free time. He is also open to the idea of working on smaller indie games as a freelance developer.
32 years in a single job is a long time. When asked how he looks back on such a defining period of his life, Imamura needs some time to find an answer.
Takaya Imamura, speaking with IGN
“The only way to sum it up is by saying that it was 32 years of working under Shigeru Miyamoto,” Imamura finally says.
Shigeru Miyamoto, the father of some of the most iconic franchises in the industry, such as Mario and Zelda, was the producer for most of the projects Imamura worked on. Only when Miyamoto became the company’s Creative Fellow in 2015 was he no longer tasked with overseeing Imamura’s projects.
When asked how Miyamoto was as a mentor, Imamura said he certainly had his fair share of getting scolded…although he says it with a laugh. “Someone who has achieved his level of success is very strict. He was strict on himself as well. I was much weaker and softer than him, to the very last day. But of course he wasn’t only strict. Sometimes he could be more playful, and I have memories of being praised by him, too.”
How an Artist with No Computer Experience Became a Game Creator
Imamura joined Nintendo in 1989. In that year, New York’s iconic Rockefeller Center was taken over by Japan’s Mitsubishi Estate. Japan’s economic bubble was at its peak, and it was the great leader of the video game industry as well. After the video game crash of 1983, a relatively small and unknown Japanese company had single-handedly revived the industry with its Family Computer, or Nintendo Entertainment System in the West. When Imamura joined Nintendo, the Super Nintendo had not yet been released, and without Sony and Microsoft, Sega was its only real competitor.
When Imamura was at college, the Family Computer had become a huge phenomenon in Japan. Imamura remembers playing classics like Metroid and Zanac on the system, and by the time he was about to graduate, he was playing Super Mario Bros. 3. But the leap from player to creator never necessarily dawned on Imamura, and he was still holding onto his childhood dream of becoming a manga artist.
Super Mario Bros. 3 box art
“I never considered video games as a type of toy that I could actually make,” he says. “Video games were made by computer programmers, not by an artist like me.”
Imamura applied for a job at Nintendo, not because he aspired to become a video game developer, but because he hoped he might be able help out with designing the game packages and instruction booklets. He loved video games so much that becoming part of the industry in any possible way sounded exciting. Imamura looked up Nintendo’s address in the instruction booklet for Super Mario Bros. and wrote the address on an envelope to apply for a job.
“That was the first time I learned that Nintendo was based in Kyoto,” Imamura recalls with a laugh.
“I had also applied for Konami. I vaguely knew that they were based in Kobe, but I had no idea where Nintendo was. Konami had a very flashy building in Kobe’s Port Island. I remember the marble floor of the lobby and the receptionists clad in formal outfits. It was exactly how I had imagined a video game company. Compared to that, Nintendo was much more reserved.”
Imamura says that throughout his 32 years at the company, Nintendo stayed reserved, sticking to only the necessary in all walks of its life.
“Historically, Nintendo was a relatively small company, so when working there it never felt like we were being watched by the whole world. It felt like working at an energetic local company,” Imamura says.
Imamura still remembers the day he went to Nintendo for his job interview. It was also the day he met Miyamoto for the first time.
“I already knew who Miyamoto was. I remember thinking, ‘So this guy made Mario, huh? Impressive’.” When he entered the interview room, he brought along a manga that he’d drawn. “Miyamoto seemed to be impressed, which made me very happy.”
“When he asked me my favorite movie, I answered Brazil and Raiders of the Lost Ark. But when I was asked my favorite game, I ended up saying Metroid,” Imamura recalls, laughing at the fact that he’d blurted out a game not made by Miyamoto.
Imamura still got the job. However, he did not know which department he would be assigned to. On his first day, Imamura was surprised to be placed in Research & Development, the department in charge of Nintendo’s biggest games like Mario and Zelda, with Miyamoto as the leader.
During a training session for new employees, Imamura remembers, Miyamoto suddenly entered the room and said, ‘You guys will work on the Super Nintendo’. Imamura had originally thought he’d be drawing art for instruction booklets, and here he was being told he’d be making games for Nintendo’s next-gen system.
This unexpected assignment came with one particular roadblock – Imamura had never even touched a keyboard. But despite having to learn some fundamentals in the early days, Imamura quickly found himself involved, and significantly contributing, to some of Nintendo’s biggest franchises.
Creating Icons
Just a little over a year after Imamura joined Nintendo, the company released the Super Nintendo in Japan on November 21, 1990. One of the system’s launch titles was F-Zero, the first game Imamura worked on.
“The Super Nintendo had a graphics mode called Mode 7, which allowed a background layer to be rotated,” he says. “Before I joined, F-Zero had already started out as a project aiming to use that feature to its full potential. Kazunobu Shimizu, the director, said he wanted to make it more sci-fi. I loved science fiction, so I reworked and edited the vehicles that Shimizu had drawn by himself. I also drew the animation patterns and characters, and I was in charge of the courses as well. In those days, we made games with teams of fewer than 10 people. F-Zero was made by an especially small team, so the person who did the sprites also had to come up with the layout of the courses, among other things.”
From the start, Imamura created iconic characters that have a special place in people’s hearts to this day, and it was only his first project.
Through his character design for games like F-Zero and Star Fox, Imamura quickly established his own unique style, in part inspired by American comics, within Nintendo. Both Captain Falcon and Star Fox protagonist Fox McCloud became part of the original character roster for Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64. And while F-Zero and Star Fox are sadly not as relevant as they once were, Imamura’s impact on Nintendo’s wide swath of iconic characters didn’t stop there.
Despite having no prior knowledge of programming, Imamura was entrusted not only with helping develop software for Nintendo’s next-gen system, but also the company’s first fully-fledged 3D game – Star Fox. Imamura says that by this time, he was already familiar with games in the third dimension.
“I had played games like Starblade, Pole Position, and Virtua Racing in the arcade, and at Nintendo we had access to 3D games from the West. I was really into the 3D games that were available on the Amiga,” Imamura says.
In the early 1990s, two young British programmers named Dylan Cuthbert and Giles Goddard paid Nintendo a visit. They had done something Nintendo had deemed impossible themselves: developing a 3D game for the Game Boy, titled X. In light of their accomplishment, Nintendo wanted them to make a 3D game for the Super Nintendo. Imamura ended up working on Star Fox together with them.
“We were developing a 3D game for the Super Nintendo by implementing the Super FX Chip inside the game’s cartridge,” says Imamura. “At the time, it was a strictly secret project. I think even at Nintendo, only a few people were aware of it. I was in charge of the 2D design, but the 3D design looked very hard, since tools for 3D development weren’t common yet.”
And of course, there was a huge language barrier. Cuthbert and Goddard were new in Japan, and they didn’t speak the language yet.
“We didn’t speak English, either, so Katsuya Eguchi, our director, studied real hard and communicated with them in broken English,” says Imamura. “Everyone was so young and cocky. I was only 24 or 25 years old myself, but Dylan and Giles became friends for life.”
After completing development on Star Fox, Cuthbert and Goddard stayed in Japan, and today they each have their own development studio in Kyoto. Imamura collaborated with Goddard’s studio Vitei on the Steel Diver series and Tank Troopers for the 3DS. Star Fox Command and Star Fox 64 3D were developed together with Q-Games, Cuthbert’s studio.
Zelda & Star Fox
Imamura is credited as an object designer for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but what exactly does that mean? Imamura explains to me that at Nintendo, sprites – the non-static objects in a 2D environment – are referred to as “objects,” but his impact went far beyond that.
“In the middle of the development of A Link to the Past, I was asked to join the project to design the bosses. If I remember correctly, I designed all the bosses except for the last one and one other. It was not just the art; I also designed the mechanics together with one of the programmers. For some bosses, we came up with the mechanics just with the two of us, while for others we first received instructions from planners on what kind of enemy they wanted. I also designed the game’s title logo and dungeon maps. Designing dungeon maps is a harsh job, as the dungeons consist of multiple floors and their structure kept changing over the course of development. So, I guess you could say I did a little more than just ‘designing objects’,” Imamura says with a laugh.
Imamura’s work on the Zelda series continued with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. where his primary task was to get it looking distinct from Ocarina of Time.
“We had to develop Majora’s Mask in just one year, so it was a very short development window. When I saw a prototype of the game, I thought it looked too similar to Ocarina of Time, so it became my task to change the look of the game over a short period.”
Imamura came up with the name Majora, the design for the game’s main mask, and the creepy moon that is falling down to earth. He also came up with arguably the quirkiest character in Nintendo’s history: Tingle.
While his contributions to the Zelda franchise are among his most prominent, Imamura told IGN that he held one previous project most dear.
Star Fox 64 3D box art, a revival of the original Star Fox 64
“Star Fox 64 is the game of my life,” he says. “It was a bit like a reboot, but by using a lot of ideas we couldn’t implement in the original, we managed to enrich the game’s scale. From planning to writing the plot, coming up with the gameplay mechanics and graphics, I really worked hard on this game. I also instructed composers on what kind of music I wanted for it.”
Although it sounds like he directed it, Imamura did not, as he was “too busy” for the position.
“It started out as an experiment with Kazuaki Morita, the programmer I had worked together with on the bosses for A Link to the Past. Morita was a super talented programmer who went above my expectations whenever I asked him to do something. Like me, he wasn’t originally a programmer, but a game designer who also knew how to do programming. As we continued to work on the prototype, more and more people joined and it started to become serious. From modelling the characters, mechs and enemies to working on effects and backgrounds, I really worked on a lot of things. In those days, it was normal to work beyond your official responsibility. For Star Fox 64 I was credited as art director, but in reality I worked on a wide array of tasks.”
By this time, Sony’s PlayStation was on the market, and games with cinematic cutscenes that made use of the CD format’s capacity had become popular.
“In Star Fox 64, the communication between characters is done through radio communication, so lowering the quality of sound didn’t harm the game’s atmosphere. Games with gorgeous cutscenes on the PlayStation had become the new norm, but while we also implemented more cinematic aspects, in the end, we wanted to stay focused on interactivity. The story would change depending on the player’s score, and by having the characters communicate the world felt more alive. We aimed for a game that would make you feel like you are watching a movie, while you are actually enjoying its interactivity. “
Collaborating to Capture Nintendo Magic
Imamura’s impact expanded beyond the walls of Nintendo, as he began to collaborate with other companies working to bring new life to Nintendo stalwarts.
“I was helping out on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker when it was still in its planning phase, but at the same time I was working on Star Fox Adventures with Rare, and I ended up having to focus on the latter. So If you ever wondered why Tingle appears so often in Wind Waker, now you know why,” Imamura laughs.
Famous for some of Nintendo’s most classic titles, including Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie, Rare was arguably Nintendo’s best second-party studio at the time. Star Fox Adventures would become the last game they developed as a second-party studio of Nintendo.
Imamura’s work extended to partnerships with other companies beyond Rare, including with Sega on a new F-Zero project.
“I think it started with Toshihiro Nagoshi proposing the project to Miyamoto,” says Imamura. “I really liked Daytona USA [which Nagoshi produced], so I was honored to work with him. We had an arcade system board called Triforce which was based on the GameCube’s architecture, so when Nagoshi proposed doing an arcade version of F-Zero, I was really happy, as I had always been a fan of arcade games.”
Sega developed F-Zero GX for the GameCube, and F-Zero AX as an arcade cabinet. During development, Imamura visited Sega’s office in Haneda three times a month.
“Back then, Nagoshi was the top of Amusement Vision, a subsidiary studio of Sega. I don’t think many people outside the company were ever allowed inside the actual development offices. Companies don’t usually let people inside their development offices, but they showed me the arcade cabinets they were working on, which has become a special memory for me,” recalls Imamura. “Nagoshi had a professional darts machine in his office, which I thought was very stylish. In those days, Nagoshi still had long hair, but he was already quite imposing.”
F-Zero GX was highly praised by media outlets and became a favorite title for many Nintendo fans. Imamura himself calls it “the ultimate F-Zero”, but after that, nearly 18 years have passed without a new entry in the series.
In his later years at Nintendo, Imamura produced and supervised numerous Star Fox projects and directed the aforementioned Steel Diver series and Tank Troopers. He was active as a developer until his very last day at the company. But like any developer that has been at it for so long, not all of his projects have seen the light of day.
“Sometimes, planning a project could take as long as an entire year,” he says. “I had colleagues who planned and experimented with multiple projects for many years [(without being able to release anything], so I think I belong to the lucky group of developers, as many of my games actually made it to the store shelves.”
Imamura, in part, believes the smaller development teams when he started made seeing through projects easier.
“Today, bigger projects like Zelda are made by over a hundred people, but in the days of the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64, I remember that even teams for the bigger projects consisted of only around 30 people. That made it easy to communicate within the team, and there was room for us to express our opinions. Today, for the bigger projects, I think there might even be some staff that aren’t aware of exactly what part of the game they are working on. I understand that dividing labor is essential in order to work efficiently, but I think that it would be great if staff members could work on smaller projects in between such big projects.”
Imamura initially described his legacy at Nintendo as “32 years of working under Shigeru Miyamoto,” but as mentioned previously, Miyamoto could no longer oversee his projects after 2015. That year also saw the death of former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, and with his new position as the company’s Creative Fellow, Miyamoto had less time to oversee actual game development, according to Imamura.
“The last time [Miyamoto and I] really worked together was during the production of Star Fox Zero,” says Imamura, referring to the 2016 Wii U title. “I was supervising the project, and Miyamoto wanted to create an anime. I worked on the anime very hard together with Production I.G and Wit Studio. I wrote the scenario and storyboard in the early phases of the project, which the professionals then made a really great anime out of. Miyamoto was heavily involved and gave detailed instructions. He was there when we recorded the dialogue, too, so he really cared about the project.”
Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins became the last project Imamura worked on together with Miyamoto. Roughly five years later, as Imamura was leaving the company, he didn’t have a chance to see Miyamoto and say goodbye in person.
“Under the current circumstances, we couldn’t meet, so we had to say goodbye over email. He has invited me to meet up and go down memory lane together once COVID-19 finally settles down, so I’m looking forward to that.”
When asked if leaving a place you called home for more than half of your life without being able to say goodbye was sad, Imamura gave a lonely smile.
“It made tidying up my desk easier, as nobody was there. When you’re at the same company for over 30 years, you really have a lot of stuff there. I had to apologize to the people nearby each time I passed them when carrying my things, but the fact that almost no one was there made it a lot easier.”
Nintendo legend Takashi Tezuka, famous for his contributions on Mario and Zelda titles among other classics, gave Imamura permission to take home statues of Majora’s Mask and Star Fox’s Arwing. Though those physical reminders of Imamura’s work may have left the office with him, his decades of work have left a much more lasting mark on Nintendo’s legacy.
Resident Evil Village is set to release for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on May 7, 2021. If you buy the PS4 or Xbox One version, the next-gen upgrade is free within the same console family. It will also be available in several editions, so read on to see what comes in each. You can preorder the game now (see it on Amazon, and in the UK).
The standard edition of Resident Evil Village comes with the game itself, along with the preorder bonus detailed below. Note that the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions are holding steady at $59.99, rather than the $69.99 price of some other “next-gen” games.
If you missed Resident Evil 7 and want to play both games, you can buy the digital-only Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 7 Complete bundle. While on PlayStation you get instant access to Resident Evil 7 Gold Edition (and Village once it comes out), on Xbox you don’t get RE7 early (you have to wait for May 7 to play both games. It’s also worth noting that Resident Evil 7 is available in the PlayStation Plus Collection and on Xbox Game Pass.
Resident Evil Village Preorder Bonus
Preorder any version of the game, and you’ll get the following in-game items:
Mr. Racoon Weapon Charm
Survival Resource Pack
A couple of retailer-exclusive preorder bonuses are also available:
PlayStation Store – Resident Evil Village soundtrack
Best Buy – Steelbook case
What Is Resident Evil Village?
Resident Evil Village is a sequel to Resident Evil 7, so once again you play as Ethan Winters, a poor unfortunate soul who arrives at a castle to rescue his daughter only to find a new group of vicious, supernatural characters who are eager to torture and kill him. This includes the tall vampire lady who became a meme the moment she made her debut, as well as her daughters, who are apparently made of bugs that can… go under your skin? It’s all a bit over the top, but that’s what fans love.
Like RE7, Village is a first-person shooter, but this time they’ve added a blocking mechanic that will play a key role in combat. They’ve also added crafting and an RE4-like inventory system. PlayStation 5 owners can download a demo now, but a different demo is planned later for the previous-gen consoles.
Earlier today, a new Super Monkey Ball game titled Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania was listed on The Australian Classifications board, seemingly indicating a new entry in the long-running franchise is coming. If this leak follows the same timeline as the last entry in the Super Monkey Ball series–which was rated by the board on July 16, 2019 and released only three months later–it’s possible game could be just around the corner. The news comes nearly a year after the game was teased by voice actor Matt Brian, who has shared multiple Instagram posts indicating that a new game is in development.
If confirmed, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania will be the first original Super Monkey Ball game released on consoles in nearly a decade, a welcome sight for weary Sega fans who might have been a bit let down by 2019’s Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz HD. Despite Banana Blitz HD’s reception, its release could mean something exciting for the next entry in the series: a release across all consoles and PC.
For those unfamiliar with the first entry in the series, simply titled Super Monkey Ball, it was the first Sega title published on a Nintendo console due to the failure of the Dreamcast. The puzzle game received high praise from critics, with GameSpot’s review stating “GameCube owners couldn’t ask for a better party game to play with friends.” In addition to providing a fun multiplayer experience with mini-games such as Monkey Target, the series also boasts a challenging single-player campaign.
It’s also worth mentioning game director Masao Shirosaki expressed interest in including Yakuza’s Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima in the series’ next entry back in a 2019 interview with Crunchyroll.
Developer Larian Studios has released a new hotfix for Baldur’s Gate 3. Hotfix 10 is aimed at balancing the loaded dice feature added in Patch 4. Previously, turning on the feature could accidentally doom you to terrible luck.
The perk of loaded dice is to ensure that you’re not completely reliant on chance. If you get a string of bad luck, the loaded dice will favor you to have a few good rolls. However, folks have been complaining that the loaded dice are too weighted to the adverse effect as well, forcing streaks of bad luck on players if they happen to get several good rolls in a row.
“We noticed in your feedback that the RNG wasn’t feeling fun for you,” Larian Studios wrote in a blog post. “We’ve seen the dice described as being harsh, cursed, rigged and someone said the RNG was downright evil. We want you to have the best experience possible when playing the game and so the changes in [April 15’s] hotfix are here to help with your hit chance, if you’re playing with loaded dice.”
So from now on, loaded dice will only ever bend your luck in your favor. So if you get a streak of bad luck, the loaded dice will throw you a bone and give you some good rolls. And if you’re on a hot streak and only getting good rolls, the loaded dice will now just do nothing. It won’t punish you and curse you with bad luck. “This change also applies to NPC’s and enemies, so the effects on the relative challenge of combat should be minimal,” Larian Studios wrote.
The full patch notes for Hotfix 10 are listed below.
Baldur’s Gate 3 Hotfix 10 Patch Notes
RNG:
Disable the failure RNG debt for combat rolls
Stability:
Fixed crash when examining a deactivated entity (like the Bulette disappearing).
Larian Launcher:
Added game pages for D:OS and D:OS2
Added a button for players to verify game files after a crash
Double clicking via LMB on the game selection section (Top left) no longer makes the launcher details disappear.
Update the bottom logo to add interactivity + make it clear it leads to larian.com
Selecting a game using RMB no longer causes the player to be stuck on one game
Added continue button so you can load your most recent save directly from the launcher
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It’s rumored that Netflix’s upcoming movie based on Ubisoft’s The Division will no longer be directed by John Wick’s David Leitch, and now one of the key creators on the project has weighed in. Producer Kelly McCormick, who is married to Leitch, said she was unable to confirm whether or not Leitch remains attached to direct, or, as the rumors are saying, if Skyscraper director Rawson Marshall Thurber has stepped in to take over.
“I cannot confirm or deny but either would be awesome as the director,” she told Collider.
Leitch’s busy schedule was referenced as one potential reason why he might not be able to direct The Division, and would instead produce instead. McCormick alluded to this busy schedule, saying she and Leitch have now wrapped up production on the star-studded action movie Bullet Train but the work isn’t done yet–there will be 30 weeks of editing on it.
While it seems technically still possible that Leitch could direct The Division, given his workload, it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. That said, McCormick pointed out that work continues on The Division’s script right now.
“We’re finishing production on Bullet Train now and we’ll be in edit for 30 weeks,” she said. “The Division, we’re writing at this time. We’ll see how that script turns out.”
Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain remain attached to star and produce The Division’s movie. According to the latest reports, Thurber is now co-writing the script for The Division movie with Ellen Shanman and potentially Leitch and McCormick.
Bethesda has provided some broad details about Fallout 76‘s Season 4 content drop, Armor Ace in Cold Steel, coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on April 27.
The new season sees players rejoining Armor Ace and the Power Patrol to take out Commissioner Chaos and his goons the Yukon Five. This quest line drops alongside the Locked & Loaded update, which includes more SPECIALs loadouts, improvements to the CAMP and Shelter system, and an all-new Daily Ops expansion.
Season 4 also features 100 ranks for players to run through, as well as rewards to claim when making it through the ranks. This includes mannequins and other objects for CAMPs, new power armor sets, more weapon skins, and additional cosmetics like backpack flairs and tadpole badges.
While waiting for Season 4 to go live, Fallout 76 players can participate in a double S.C.O.R.E. XP event from APRIL 15-19. Players will earn double the rate of S.C.O.R.E. points for each completed Daily Challenge.
Bethesda unveiled its 2021 roadmap for Fallout 76 earlier this year. It outlines what’s next for the online multiplayer open-world shooter after Season 4: Armor Ace in Cold Steel and the Locked & Loaded update, including some mysterious change planned for Season 6 this fall.
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Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson has been cast in the titular role of Netflix’s I Slept with Joey Ramone, according to Entertainment Weekly. The upcoming biopic “chronicles the life of the iconic frontman of the Ramones,” and the project and casting choice have both been announced on the twentieth anniversary of Ramone’s death.
The movie is an adaptation of Mickey Leigh’s–Ramone’s brother–2009 memoir of the same name, and is being co-written by Davidson and his frequent collaborator, Jason Orley (Big Time Adolescence, Pete Davidson: Alive From New York), who will also direct the film. The adaptation is being made with the cooperation and support of Ramone’s estate.
“I Slept with Joey Ramone is a great rock anthem that will make an equally great rock biopic, set apart by a universal story of family,” said Adam Fogelson, chairman of production company STX Films. “Pete is perfect for this role and we’re excited he and Jason will be bringing this icon of rock to life… [Leigh] has irreplaceable memories of and insights into Joey Ramone, having supported him when no one else would and witnessed him overcome adversity in the most dramatic way.”
Phrased that way, Davidson’s interest in the role–and the public’s way into seeing him as the musician–makes complete sense. While mostly known for his role as a performer on SNL, Davidson has also recently been branching out into bigger dramatic parts, including The King of Staten Island in 2020 and Netflix’s Motley Crue biopic The Dirt in 2019. On the horizon, Davidson will appear in The Suicide Squad this August.
Manticore Games has just launched Core, a new sandbox game powered by user-generated content, allowing players to explore a multiverse full of different activities and stories to uncover. In 2020, Core launched in open alpha for PC players, allowing them to dive into the game’s many portals. But now, the game is out on the Epic Games Store in early access.
To celebrate the launch, Manticore Games has also released a brand-new cinematic trailer, showcasing the game’s many locales–all of which are player-made–along with some scenes that tease what’s to come with the future of the game. Coinciding with the early access launch of Core, Manticore Games and Epic have a set of exclusives for new players who download the game. These store-exclusive downloads include new hero characters to play as and player mounts to ride while exploring the Core’s Multiverse.
For the uninitiated, Core is an expansive sandbox that hinges on the conceit of exploring a massive multiverse of worlds that have their own unique experiences, gameplay modes, and narratives to see play out. Think of it as a blend of Fortnite’s colorful and cartoon-like style, the complex creation tools from Media Molecule’s Dreams, and the scope of Minecraft and Roblox. Core is interesting because it manages to tie each of its worlds together, which can be accessed from the game’s hub world where players can meet and venture off together. These worlds include familiar stages shooter levels and racing worlds but can also include more inventive concepts where players can meet up to explore cities and alien planets, or socialize with other explorers.
In a press release following the game’s launch, Manticore Games chief creative officer Jordan Maynard stated the following: “Core’s games showcase what’s possible when the power of creation is made accessible to anyone,” he said. “We built Core to open gaming to a new wave of creators from all backgrounds. That new generation is already publishing amazing experiences that rival those of big studios or that big studios wouldn’t even think of making.”
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Last year, I got to see an early build of the game in action, and even then, it showed great promise for its potential as a platform for creativity within a growing community of players looking to make a game of their own. This similar conceit has seen a lot of popularity in recent years due to the growing success of games like Fortnite and Minecraft, along with films like Ready Player One, all of which give context to its meeting of different worlds coming together in a new medium. With Core’s launch, there’s now another game on the block looking to experiment with the multiverse concept, and it’ll be interesting to see where Manticore Games, along with the community of players taking advantage of the creative engine, can take the game from here now that it’s in everyone’s hands.
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