The King of Fighters XV has been delayed from 2021 to Q1 2022 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the game’s development timeline.

SNK shared the news in a press release, and The King of Fighters XV’s producer Yasuyuki Oda explained the team’s difficult decision to delay the upcoming fighting game.

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“There are many fans who are anticipating the release of KOF XV in 2021, however at this point in time, we unfortunately have to announce that KOF XV will now be launching within the 1st quarter of 2022,” Oda said. “The development timeline we set out to reach in the beginning has been affected by the ever-still rising cases of COVID-19 within Japan.

“We have made the ultimate decision in the end that the product’s quality must come first, and so with that decision comes an altered release window. We sincerely ask for your kind patience and understanding as our development teams continue to work hard on KOF XV as we draw closer to its release.”

The King of Fighters XV was announced during EVO 2019 and we got our first look at gameplay earlier this year alongside six fighters that will be part of the game, including K’, Kyo Kusanagi, Leona, Benimaru, Shun’ei and Mai Shiranui

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While fans may have to wait a bit to play The King of Fighters XV, they can always try a few matches as Terry Bogard in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

In honor of Pride Month, Square Enix has revealed a Pride Mascot designed by Final Fantasy 9’s Toshiyuki Itahana that it wants its fans to name.

Square Enix shared the Pride Mascot on Twitter and has asked its fans to reply to the tweet with a name idea that “might become part of Square Enix history.”

Our #Pride Mascot designed by Toshiyuki Itahana represents diversity and freedom, and we want you to help name them!

Reply to this tweet with a name idea and it might become part of Square Enix history.https://t.co/Mrs0HolY9g #loveislove pic.twitter.com/atCLgXJQir

— Square Enix (@SquareEnix) June 1, 2021

Itahana, who has also worked on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, the Chocobo’s Dungeon titles, and more, explained why this mascot is so much more than just a colorful character.

“The character represents diversity and freedom, with its multitude of colours being the diversity aspect and the trainers and wings that allow it to travel anywhere symbolizing freedom,” Itahana said. “I designed this character hoping that the world can become even more free and diverse in the future.”

Square further explained that, in year’s past, its employees have “marched alongside others in support of intersectional equality, dignity and inclusion.” Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many of these parades and celebrations have been cancelled, and the company “wanted to do something special to honour the LGBTQ+ community and show our support.”

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The yet-to-be-named Square Enix Pride Mascot has also found its way onto three shirts and a hoodie that can be purchased on the Square Enix Store. Throughout June, Square Enix will be donating all profits from the shirts to the Stonewall and GLAAD organizations.

This is another example of a company celebrating Pride Month, and follows Dontnod’s decision to make Tell Me Why free on all platforms from June 1-June 30.

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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.

Nintendo has announced that it will be opening a “Nintendo Gallery” museum in Japan by March 2024 that will give the company a way to showcase its product development history and philosophy to the public.

Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa shared the news in a press release, revealing that its Nintendo Uji Ogura Plant (Ogura-cho, Uji-city, Kyoto) and the surrounding land will be used to create the tentatively named Nintendo Gallery. Inside, Nintendo’s historical products will be featured alongside exhibits, experiences, and much more. The project is expected to be completed in Nintendo’s 2023 Fiscal Year, which ends in March 2024.

The Nintendo Uji Ogura Plant was built in 1969 and was used to manufacture both playing cards and Hanafuda cards in addition to operating as a customer service center for product repairs.

Originally known as the Uji Plant, the name was changed to the Uji Ogura Plant in 1988 after “the construction, extension and renovation of the current Uji Plant (Makishima-cho, Uji-city, Kyoto).” After the Uji Ogura Plant’s functions were transferred to the current Uji Plant in November 2016, Nintendo began deciding how to best use the building and land. The answer would come to be the Nintendo Gallery.

Nintendo’s storied history began in 1889 and, since then, the company has sold more than five billion video games and over 790 million hardware units globally.

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For more on Nintendo’s history, check out every Nintendo console redesigns, a look at Nintendo’s hardware from 1977 to now, the history of (almost) every Nintendo accessory ever, and our IGN Inside Story on the lie that helped build Nintendo.

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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.

We’re drifting you full-speed into a ton of discounts today. Aside from the titular NFS price blitz, we’ve found yet more gems in the Amazon Mid-Year Sale That Just Keeps on Giving. We’re talking everything from cheap Marioware on the Switch to must-own triple As on the PS5. It’s all here and it’s all going cheap like the budgie.

Purchase Cheaply for PC

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Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch

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Exciting Offers for XO/XS

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Product Savings for PS4/PS5

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Other Deals for June 2

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Not everyone is happy with Netflix’s most recent round of Sandman casting announcements. But Sandman co-creator/series executive producer Neil Gaiman makes it clear he “gives zero f****” about the negative backlash to the casting of actors like Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death and Mason Alexander Park as Desire.

“I give all the fucks about the work. I spent 30 years successfully battling bad movies of Sandman,” Gaiman tweeted. “I give zero f**** about people who don’t understand/ haven’t read Sandman whining about a non-binary Desire or that Death isn’t white enough. Watch the show, make up your minds.”

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Much of the toxic backlash seems to center around the Death and Desire characters specifically. Death, like the rest of the Endless family, is depicted with ivory white skin in the comics, while Howell-Baptiste is Black.

Even Gaiman seems perplexed as to why Desire’s casting is such a source of controversy. In the comics, Desire is best described as a nonbinary or genderfluid character whose appearance and sex changes based on the sexual urges of those around them. Park is a nonbinary actor, perhaps best-known for playing the lead role in the Broadway musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

When Twitter user @slatingsun pointed out Desire has always been a nonbinary character, Gaiman replied, “Well, yes. But you’d have to have read the comics to know that. And the shouty people appear to have skipped that step.”

In short, Gaiman is urging fans to watch the series before judging the casting choices. Previously, Gaiman revealed casting Death was a long, difficult process that involved testing hundreds of actresses before finally discovering Howell-Baptiste.

“Hundreds of talented women from all around the planet auditioned, and they were brilliant, and none of them were right,” Gaiman wrote. “Someone who could speak the truth to Dream, on the one hand, but also be the person you’d want to meet when your life was done on the other. And then we saw Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s (she/her) audition and we knew we had our Death.”

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The Sandman also stars Tom Sturridge as Dream/Morpheus, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer Morningstar, Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian and Charles Dance as Roderick Burgess. Production is currently underway on the first season, with a release date yet to be announced.

We do know the Netflix series will be a more loose adaptation of the comics compared to Audible’s audio drama. For more on the source material, check out IGN’s The Sandman Explained feature.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Two Point Studios appears to be hanging up the lab coat and reaching for a cap and gown in its follow-up to 2018’s Two Point Hospital, Two Point Campus. While the game has yet to be officially confirmed, a listing on the Microsoft store (since taken down) unveiled images and a lengthy description of the game, which promises to be full of laughs, “twists,” and “new creative tools to help you build the university of your dreams.”

Similarly to Two Point Hospital, Two Point Campus appears to be a comedic management sim packed with plenty of puns and nonsense. One such example is that players are permitted to teach “Knight School” at their universities, a series of classes where students can learn jousting and other chivalrous skills. The game also features a Gastronomy class, where students create “mouth-watering concoctions like giant pizzas and enormous pies.” When not creating a wacky course catalog, players must build up their campuses with the best professors and facilities to “watch the academic potential of your students get unlocked.”

However, just as importantly as academics is the happiness of player’s students. In addition to managing their money and resources, players must also get to know their pupils and “explore their individual personalities, wants and needs” in order to keep them happy with clubs, societies, and gigs. In fact, it seems like the happiness and relationship status of your students will play a pretty major role in your college’s success based on the game’s description. According to the listing, players will need to “surround [the students] with friends, help them develop relationships, furnish them with pastoral care and ensure they have the right amount of joie de vivre to develop into incredible individuals who will do the legacy of your university proud.”

On top of these shifts, Two Point Campus players will not only enjoy a change of scenery, but have more control over it as they unlock the ability to build outside. According to the game’s description, the title features additions that allow players to “lay down pathways with new easy-to-use tools, plant glorious collections of outdoor flora,” and “place benches, fountains, sculptures, hedgerows–even picket fences.” The listing then jokes “the only limit is your imagination (and your in-game bank balance).”

While the listing for Two Point Campus did not contain a release date, it did confirm the upcoming game will be coming to PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. It’s also worth noting Two Point Hospital did eventually come to both the Switch and PlayStation 4 a year and a half after it’s Microsoft exclusive launch, a pattern Two Point Campus could repeat.

This summer is littered with gaming events, sure to be filled with new announcements, surprises, and updates. For anyone looking to know what limited-edition physical games they can get their hands on, the Limited Run Games 2021 showcase will be taking place on Monday, June 14, at 1 PM PT/4 PM ET. Limited Run Games has said that the hour-long showcase will feature 25 announcements, including new games, physical editions of cult classics, and reissues of classic titles.

Limited Run Games 2021 Start Time

Limited Run Games’ “#LRG3 2021” goes live Monday, June 14, at 1 PM PT/4 PM ET. The show, produced by Mega64, promises 25 physical game announcements in an hour-long presentation. During the 2020 show the company announced physical versions of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2, Katana Zero, To The Moon, and many more, so expect a variety of titles to be announced during the showcase.

• 1 PM PT
• 3 PM CT
• 4 PM ET
• 8 PM GMT

How To Watch Limited Run Games 2021 Showcase

Limited Run Games 2021 showcase will be available on the company’s official Twitch page.

What To Expect

In past showcases, Limited Run Games have announced a number of indie titles and older classics getting physical editions. Typically, most games are announced for PS4 and Switch–of the roughly 30 games announced in 2020, only 3 weren’t available on either PS4 or Switch–but it could be possible to see PS5 games this year since the console is now officially out.

On the May 2 episode of the Xbox Expansion Pass podcast, Limited Run Games founders Douglas Bogart and Josh Fairhurst said that the company has officially partnered with Xbox and plans to make announcements soon, so there could be Xbox games at the show as well.

On Twitter, the company also gave an update about some of the titles it has already announced but haven’t released, like Katana Zero and Night In The Woods, so it seems like the showcase will be reserved for new announcements.

The Limited Run Games live stream comes shortly after Summer Game Fest on June 10 and the Xbox and Bethesda Game Showcase on June 13. GameSpot will be live streaming all of the games events and showcases during June as part of Play for All 2021, raising money for AbleGamers, which focuses on helping people with disabilities play games and improving accessibility in games.

With the release of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition in May, the sci-fi series has been garnering a lot of renewed attention, including from developers who worked on the original game. For example, a designer who worked on Mass Effect 3’s 2012 release recently unveiled an Easter egg that he put in the game that had never been discovered.

Cinematic designer Richard Boisvert posted on Reddit in May about the secret and gave some guidance to players who were interested in seeing it for themselves in the remasters. It’s a cool little homage to a Mars rover, probably Opportunity, near the beginning of Mass Effect 3’s Mars mission. If you follow a specific route, you can find a rover that’ll drive over to you and give you a little nod.

Boisvert himself believed that no one had ever even seen the rover, but that part isn’t exactly true. As pointed out by Kotaku, the rover itself had been spotted last year–but no one had ever figured out how to trigger its action.

While this is obviously just a cool gesture to NASA’s Mars rover program, it’s actually not that far-fetched that the little vehicles will still be around on Mars even as far in the future as 2186, when the game takes place. If no one removes them, they likely will still exist in some degraded form as monuments to past space exploration. Of course, it’s impossible for it to actually be functional in 2186. Opportunity no longer works, while Curiosity and Perseverance will continue on for the next few years.

Play For All is back for 2021. And while we’ll be covering all of the summer happenings, including E3 and the assorted showcase events coming up, we’ll also have two days in June where we’ll be livestreaming a ton of content centered around the hottest upcoming games.

While we’re not ready to reveal our full schedule just yet, we can tell you that we’ll be broadcasting E3 on June 14-15, followed by our own live show June 16-17. These will be home to interviews with AAA developers, exclusive gameplay reveals and trailers, announcements, and much more. We’ll also be getting started with a one-hour kickoff show on June 4 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET where we’ll preview Play For All, E3, and all of the surrounding events. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store.

Our streams will be available on GameSpot.com, Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. We’ll be updating this story with a more detailed schedule as we draw closer to the event, but you can get an overview of what we can share now. Be sure to also check out our E3 2021 schedule post for a more detailed rundown on the official publisher events.

To cap off Play For All, we’ll be hosting a series of livestreams to help raise money for AbleGamers. You can look for those later in June–expect a variety of guests from throughout the games industry–but you can donate right now. Alongside all of our Play For All events, we’ll be covering all things E3, including previewing the various press conferences and delivering post-show analysis.

June 4

• 9 AM PT — Play For All kickoff stream

June 5

• 2 AM PT — Indie Live Expo
• 8 AM PT — Guerrilla Collective Day 1

June 7-11

• Netflix Geeked

June 9

• 7 AM PT — Battlefield 6 reveal

June 10

• 11 AM PT — Summer Game Fest Kickoff Live

June 11

• 12 PM PT — Koch Media gaming event

June 12

• 8 AM PT — Guerrilla Collective Day 2
• 10 AM PT — Wholesome Direct
• 12 PM PT — Ubisoft Forward
• TBA — Devolver Digital

June 13

• 10 AM PT — Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase

June 14

• 1 PM PT — Limited Run Games
• 3 PM PT — Razer E3 keynote

June 16-17

• TBA — Play For All livestreams

June 21-25

E3 is just around the corner in mid-June, and that’s led many fans to wonder if Nintendo is going to host a special Nintendo Direct to go along with the usual onslaught of gaming news. While Nintendo has foregone the usual blockbuster press conferences to focus on a pre-recorded Direct, we do know that Nintendo is going to be a part of the E3 event sometime between June 12 to 15.

That’s because unlike Sony, Nintendo is still an official partner of the ESA, meaning that it’s going to participate in the event proper, which runs during those dates. Again, we don’t know for sure that Nintendo will hold a Direct at all, but we know it’s going to do something in that time range, so keep your eyes peeled for it. You should be able to check out the hypothetical Direct right here at GameSpot, as well as Nintendo’s official social media channels on Twitch and YouTube.

Though Nintendo did not end up doing an E3 2020 Direct due to the impact of the coronavirus, the company’s E3 2019 Direct came on June 11, the first day of the conference. In terms of what to expect from the Direct, rumors and analysis have suggested that the company may announce a Switch Pro or some other new hardware revision of its successful console as the big headline. A recent report suggested that the Switch Pro could even be announced before E3 begins.

We may also see footage from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, perhaps the most anticipated game for the Switch. For more on E3 2021, check out our official schedule and list of participants, as well as our guide to the games and announcements we really want to see this year.