It’s official: Flash is dead. Adobe is now blocking content made with Flash from running on browsers.
On Flash’s final update page, the company stated, “Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems.”
It’s more accurate to say Flash has been dead since Adobe’s announcement for the tool’s end-of-life plans in 2017. And before that, Flash certainly was well on its way to the grave. Not a lot of websites were still using it, and HTML/CSS became pretty much the new tool kit. iOS devices also stopped officially supporting Flash, circa 2010. Steve Jobs famously hated Flash and wrote an open letter criticizing the plug-in for its reliability and security, among other things.
But in its heyday, people used Flash to make websites–like really popular websites–and DIY novelty games, as explored in writing like Nathalie Lawhead’s Short History of Flash is a good one and The Death of 2 Advanced.
Not all was good, of course. Adobe made the decision to kill off Flash in part because of its security issues. Flash’s security holes provided the throughway for multiple attacks against desktops.
If you’re curious about what a slice of the Flash era looked like, preservationists are doing the good work of documenting Flash games and websites. One developer ported his Flash games to the original Game Boy, and others are creating repositories like the Flash Game Archive.
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Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first two seasons of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy and The Umbrella Academy comic book series.
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Netflix has renewed The Umbrella Academy for a third 10-episode season, which seems like an obvious choice considering that the show’s second season was hugely popular. Production will begin in February with the main cast being joined by a (mostly) new group of actors who will be playing the Sparrow Academy. This nasty gang are the students of Sir Reginald Hargreeves in the alternate present our heroes will find themselves in during Season 3.
The extremely dysfunctional superpowered family has spent the past two seasons trying to stop apocalyptic events of their own making, so the question is what the future — or alt-present as — has in store. The comics by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba that the show is based on likely have some answers, so let’s dig into some possibilities.
Season 2 ended with the Hargreeves siblings having successfully stopped nuclear war from breaking out in 1963 and time traveling back to 2019. Unfortunately their time in the past seems to have significantly affected the future.
Though in Season 1 their adoptive father Sir Reginald Hargreeves had killed himself in 2019 in a bid to reunite the Umbrella Academy in the hopes that they would prevent the end of the world, apparently in this timeline he’s still alive and found a new group of superpowered kids to turn into a superhero team. Also, it seems he’s a pretty horrible father in both timelines.
At the end of Season 2, when the Hargreeves siblings return from 1963 to their home in 2019, they discover it’s now the base of the Sparrow Academy, a group led by their dead sibling Ben (Justin H. Min), who also apparently didn’t die in this new timeline. Posing behind him, with their faces obscured so that the actors and characters could be revealed later, are the members of this entirely different squad. Presumably they’re made up of members of the strange group of 43 children who were born on the same day in 1989, just like the Umbrella Academy gang.
The Sparrow Academy as glimpsed in the Season 2 finale.
The Sparrow Academy in the Comics
The Sparrow Academy does feature significantly in the third collection of the comics, Hotel Oblivion. Vanya is left seriously injured by her fight with the rest of the Umbrella Academy and spends much of the time after that incident trying to recover physically and mentally. In Hotel Oblivion, her robotic mother, who didn’t die in the comics as she did in the show’s first season, takes her to meet a friend named Deever who once worked with Reginald Hargreeves. It’s likely that he was involved in the same project to locate and train the 43 children.
After Deever grills Vanya for 20 minutes, her mother (called Grace in the show but just Mom in the comics) takes her to Paris where she meets a woman wearing a red jacket with a sparrow pin similar to the umbrella logo members of the Umbrella Academy sport. The woman tells Vanya that she’s “coming home” and leads her to a remote facility in Norway where she says Vanya will find family. Later, seven members of the Sparrows bail out the Umbrella Academy during a big fight. Their Number One greets Luther as a brother, further reinforcing the idea that they’re all from the same group of children.
That’s the very last scene in Hotel Oblivion, but more is coming. Gerard Way is currently working on a spinoff prequel centering on fan favorite character Klaus, but he’s announced that Volume 4 of the main series will be called Sparrow Academy and likely center on this new group. There’s no announced date for the comic, so it’s possible that the show will start answering these questions even before the comics.
The Sparrow Academy from the comics.
Who’s in the Sparrow Academy?
One big departure in the show is that Ben is alive and part of the Sparrow Academy. But beyond him, the comics don’t provide a ton of info about the Sparrows beyond a hint as to their powers. Vanya is in a wheelchair when she first meets a member of the Sparrow Academy and insists that she can’t walk. When the woman says “I don’t believe you,” Vanya discovers to her surprise that she can actually walk. When she asks how that’s possible, the woman responds “I said so.” That strongly hints that she might have the sort of extremely powerful mind controlling and reality warping powers of Allison Hargreeves, who can make something true just by saying “I heard a rumor…”
All of the members of the Sparrow Academy seem to be able to fly, though it’s unclear if they each individually have that power, if one character gives the others the power, or if they’re using technology. The powers demonstrated by the members of the Sparrow Academy in the comics are:
Dark energy eye blasts
Transforming into a flock of birds
A human voodoo doll who can hurt themselves to damage enemies
Netflix has revealed what to expect from the Sparrows in the show. They will include:
Marcus, a.k.a. Sparrow No. 1, will be played by Justin Cornwell and is apparently the group’s leader. “Graceful but lethal, calculated but compassionate, he is as smart as he is strong,” says Netflix.
Justin H. Min returns as Ben, Sparrow No. 2. This alternate Ben is described as “a Machiavellian tactician, wrapped up in a pretty boy body with a rumbling inner-squid.” He’s “vicious, pragmatic, and hyper-vigilant” and wants to become the leader of the group.
Fei, Sparrow No. 3, will be played by Britne Oldford. She “sees the world in a special way” and “comes across as a misanthrope who would rather be alone than spend even a second with you.”
Alphonso, Sparrow No. 4, is played by Jake Epstein as a person whose face and body are scarred with “countless visual reminders of his battles” from his years of crime-fighting.
Sloane, Sparrow No. 5, is played by Genesis Rodriguez and is described as “a romantic and a dreamer who feels a higher cosmic calling leaving her eager to see the world and experience a life beyond her upbringing.”
Jayme, Sparrow No. 6, is played by Cazzie David and is “a loner hidden under a hoodie.”
Christopher, Sparrow No. 7, is “a telekinetic cube of unknown origin,” per Netflix. “He can turn the room freezing cold and induce paralyzing fear. He acts as the Sparrows’ consulted oracle who hands out incredible advice and serves as the family mediator.”
With the Handler dead, the Temps Commission in friendly hands, and Vanya rehabilitated, the Umbrella Academy is going to need a new villain. It’s possible that the season’s main antagonist will be Reginald, especially since last season revealed that he’s an alien in disguise — something shown in the comic’s first issue. But Hotel Oblivion also offers plenty of other options.
The titular location in Hotel Oblivion is a pocket dimension where Hargreeves sent all the supervillains that the Umbrella Academy defeated over the years, kind of like a more disturbing version of the Phantom Zone. Much of the story follows the Murder Magician, who doesn’t really live up to his name, having only “killed the physical manifestation of a lie in human form” which was apparently a version of Allison created through her powers.
He’s been in Hotel Oblivion for some time after a fight with the Umbrella Academy that killed his assistant. He has a baby with another prisoner, a mentally unstable shapeshifter who carries around a broken Magic 8-Ball. Trying to protect the baby from her, he hatches an escape plan with Obscura, a much more wicked gangster with a camera attached to his head. As weird as the Netflix adaptation is, the comics are much, much weirder.
The escapees arrive in the basement of the Perseus Corporation, a powerful company that has somehow acquired the teleportation device Reginald used to access his prison. John Perseus’ father, John Perseus the Ninth, was a supervillain defeated by the Umbrella Academy and condemned to Hotel Oblivion. When Perseus the Tenth realizes what he’s got, he goes to Hotel Oblivion to bust him out but finds that his father has committed suicide. He decides to take on his mantle with the help of Medusa, a floating robotic head. Then he releases all the still-living prisoners and causes absolute havoc.
Some of the former inmates include the Scientific Man, an extremely powerful villain with the ability to disintegrate people, who often kills other prisoners. He seems to be modeled after Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Terminal is seemingly based on Galactus and can absorb anything into his stomach to grow more powerful. The Peppermint Scarves is a gang inspired by a band that Gerard Way made up for Christmas cards. And there are a bunch of other very strange bad guys like the Sequin Skull, a giant eyeball on a human body that shoots lasers, and someone in a suit with a black widow spider for a head.
Any of these characters are up for grabs in Season 3, though it’s also possible that the show’s writers will just create new foes for the gang to face (as they did with Lila in Season 2).
Eldritch Terrors
When Luther and Diego go to Hotel Oblivion, the sky rips open and reveals a squidlike monstrosity that reaches down a tentacle to touch Luther on the forehead and give him a sequence of strange visions. It then shrieks and flees. Doctor Zoo, a friend of Reginald, realizes that the hotel was designed to be a cosmic trap for that entity, with the prisoners serving as bait.
Later in the comic, Klaus is suffering from a drug overdose where he is confronted by Ben’s ghost, who appears with a hole in his stomach. Ben’s ability was to summon eldritch tentacles from his abdomen and it’s never really explained how he died. His headstone reads “May the darkness within you find peace in the light,” which could imply he suffered from mental illness or that his own strange power killed him.
Ben gives Klaus the cryptic message “It’s coming. You better be ready.” That could be a further reference to the strange entity Hotel Oblivion was meant to trap. Reginald is seen escaping a dying planet for Earth in Season 1, so it’s possible that this cosmic threat was to blame for his previous home’s destruction and that it’s caught up with him. With Ben alive again in the show, we could learn more about how his powers work and how they’re connected to this threat.
Whatever material from the comics the new season does integrate, we’re just hoping that it maintains the show’s zany humor mixed with some good family drama. If you have any theories or characters you’d like to see, let us know in the comments!
MachineGames (Wolfenstein: The New Order and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus) and Bethesda are partnering with Lucasfilm Games on a standalone Indiana Jones game, to be executive produced by Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard.
Bethesda tweeted to say “A new Indiana Jones game with an original story is in development from our studio, @MachineGames, and will be executive produced by Todd Howard, in collaboration with @LucasfilmGames. It’ll be some time before we have more to reveal, but we’re very excited to share today’s news!”
An original post from Bethesda on Twitter includes a video that shows the word MachineGames, a Lucasfilm Games logo, and the iconic hat and whip. A StarWars.com post explains that the teaser “may hold some clues”, but does explain that the game will be set “at the height of the career of the famed adventurer.”
Aside from the company logos, the game will seemingly revolve in part around Vatican City, with a plane ticket to Rome dated for October 1937, and, as IGN’s Jordan Oloman points out, a map including the Sistine Chapel spead out on the desk.
No release date, genre, or platforms have been given at time of writing, but one thing is clear – MachineGames will have plenty of ideas for how Indie can dispatch Nazis.
Lucasfilm Games was announced as a returning brand yesterday, which will seemingly cover games made by multiple developers “in the Star Wars galaxy and beyond” – this is clearly the “beyond” part. “Lucasfilm Games is now the official identity for all gaming titles from Lucasfilm,” read a statement, “a name that encompasses the company’s rich catalog of video games and its eye toward the future.”
Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts) released multiple Indiana Jones games in its time as a developer, including adventure game classic Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis – which we’ve called the greatest ever Indiana Jones game.
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Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].
Wolfenstein developer Machine Games is working on an Indiana Jones video game. The announcement came by way of a teaser video posted by publisher Bethesda. The game will tell an original, standalone story that focuses on Indiana Jones himself “at the height” of his career.
No further details about the game have been divulged yet, and Bethesda said you should expect the studio to stay quiet about the game for some time. For now, check out the mood teaser:
“A new Indiana Jones game with an original story is in development from our studio, Machine Games, and will be executive produced by Todd Howard, in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games,” Bethesda said in its announcement. “It’ll be some time before we have more to reveal, but we’re very excited to share today’s news!”
In its own statement, Disney said, “The game will tell a wholly original, standalone tale set at the height of the career of the famed adventurer.”
The announcement of this game comes just a day after Disney announced Lucasfilm Games, which is the new catch-all name for Disney’s gaming efforts connected to Lucasfilm properties.
There have been many Indiana Jones video games over the years, but none have released recently. The Lego Indiana Jones series in particular has been very successful.
The new Indiana Jones game will be a Microsoft title, it seems, as the Xbox company recently announced its intention to buy Bethesda and parent company ZeniMax for $7.5 billion. It’s early days for the Indiana Jones game, so there is no word yet on if it will be an Xbox-exclusive.
PowerA’s wireless controllers are a great alternative to the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. Every button can be remapped, and they also have back panel triggers to add more versatility. Unfortunately, these controllers don’t have rumble or NFC support for Amiibo. That said, they are still a solid option, especially at this price. You can snag a blue controller featuring Sobble or a white controller covered with cute Pokemon faces for $35.
While he has still initiated quarantine after being tested positive for COVID-19, WWE Champion Drew McIntyre told his fans and the rest of the WWE Universe that he doesn’t have any symptoms so far and still willing to challenge anybody for his title.
Well, as hinted last week on Legends Night on Raw, WWE Hall of Famer and former WCW Champion Goldberg will challenge the Scotsman for his WWE Championship at the Royal Rumble. The WWE Championship is something that has eluded Goldberg for his entire career, and we could be looking at a new world champion come January 31.
Drew won the Royal Rumble event last year, followed by beating Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania to win his first world title in WWE. His run has been interesting considering there hasn’t been much live fanfare because of the pandemic, but it’s been seen as a positive run so far from fans and one of the strongest-looking champs in recent memory. Goldberg could be the challenge that Drew needs to really cement him “the guy” right now.
Goldberg doesn’t have a great track record at the Rumble. The two-time Universal Champion has only participated in one Royal Rumble and that was in 2004, coming in at entrant number 30 and lasting just two minutes before being eliminated by Kurt Angle.
However, Goldberg has a better history of coming in at the last second and winning a title to participate in Wrestlemania. He did that in 2017 against Kevin Owens at Fastlane as well as beating Bray Wyatt at Super Showdown last year–also in February.
While Drew is still keeping himself in quarantine, there are still three weeks until the event and anything could happen with the champ’s symptoms. We’re wishing him a speedy recovery.
After releasing next-gen patches for various other games in 2020, EA is setting its sights on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which has received an update on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
The patch, which is available now on both platforms, improves the game’s frame rate on both next-gen machines and it delivers improved dynamic resolution ranges on Xbox. The Jedi Fallen Order also boosts the post-processing resolution on the new machines (except for the Series S).
On Xbox Series X’s Performance mode, the frame rate is improved to 60 FPS, while the dynamic resolution will be in the range of 1080p to 1440p. In normal mode on Xbox Series X, players can expect a postprocessing increase to 4K, with dynamic resolution in the range of 1512p to 2160p.
Xbox Series S, meanwhile, sees its frame rate for Jedi Fallen Order increased to 60 FPS.
On PS5, players can expect an increase in frame rate to 60 FPS, with postprocessing boosted to 1440p. People on Sony’s machine should also know that dynamic resolution is now disabled, making the game render at 1200p.
2020 was a year where most people sought security and comfort at home, staving off boredom with video games and naturally tweeting about their experiences along the way. With a number of high-profile games, next-gen console launches, and some controversy along the way, Twitter saw record-breaking numbers about gaming on its platform.
According to the social media platform, the topic of video games resulted in an all-time high of more than 2 billion tweets throughout the year, a 75% increase from 2019’s numbers. Gaming was the sixth most-followed topic on Twitter and within that category, topics such as esports, Fortnite, and gaming influencers dominated various discussions. Twitter says that these were the ten most popular topics that users tweeted about:
Most-Followed Gaming Topics
Gaming
Gaming News
Esports
Gaming Influencers
Playstation
Fortnite
Call of Duty
Minecraft
Animal Crossing
Xbox
Japan was the country that tweeted most about gaming, followed by the US, Korea, and Brazil. As for the actual games, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the most popular title to talk about on Twitter, while surprise entries such as Fate/Grand Order, Disney: Twisted-Wonderland, and Identity V also earned spots on the top ten list.
Most Tweeted About Video Games
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (@animalcrossing)
Fate/Grand Order (@fgoproject)
Disney: Twisted-Wonderland (@twst_jp)
Final Fantasy (@FinalFantasy)
Fortnite (@fortnitegame)
Ensemble Stars! (@ensemble_stars)
Knives Out (@game_knives_out)
Genshin Impact (@GenshinImpact)
Apex Legends (@PlayApex)
Identity V (@IdentityVJP)
The 2020 Game Awards was the most tweeted about game event in 2020, while The Future of Gaming on PS5 Event, Tokyo Game Show 2020, Niconico Net Chokaigi 2020, and the Xbox Games Showcase filled out the rest of that list. When it came to video game personalities, content creator and G2 Esports presenter Ibai Garatea Llanos was the most popular person in video gaming to talk about. Seán McLoughlin–better known online as JackSepticEye–was the third most popular personality, followed closely by Richard “Ninja” Blevins in fourth place.
Most Tweeted About Gaming Personalities
@ibaillanos
@rubiu5
@jack_septic_eye
@ninja
@pokimanelol
@timthetatman
@BadBoyHalo
@technothepig
@georgenotfound
@Corpse_Husband
Esports had few surprises on Twitter. The social media’s records showed that FaZe Clan was the team that had the most Twitter attention, Mongraal garnered all the attention as the esports athlete that people couldn’t stop tweeting about, and League of Legends World 2020 beat EVO Japan 2020 to be the most talked-about gaming event of last year.
While it remains to be seen if 2021 will surpass these numbers, the platform is already being used for something new, as you can now play Pokemon Red through Twitter user Constantin Lietard‘s account.
Streaming platform Hulu has announced a nice subscription deal for college students in the US. Students can subscribe to the ad-supported Hulu plan for only $2/month. For everyone else, this plan costs $6/month.
The new offer went live today in the US. Eligible students who are 18 or older can watch all of the Hulu content they want, for as long as they remain a student. The new pricing plan comes into effect just as new semesters at universities begin across the US.
The discounted rate also includes support for Hulu’s Watch Party feature which allows members to watch TV shows and movies together (virtually) at the same time.
Hulu uses a system called SheerID to verify enrollment in a college or university, so don’t think you’ll be able to game the system and score a cheaper subscription if you’re not a student. You can visit Hulu’s website to see the full terms and conditions of the offer. Note that you need to click on “Looking for our student discount?” at the bottom of the sign-up page to find the deal.
Hulu has a number of high-profile shows in its catalog, including Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Family Guy, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, as well as originals like Pen15 and Little Fires Everywhere.
The latest trailer for Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury has teased what the Switch-exclusive content of the Wii U port will contain, including a gigantic Bowser.
Super Mario 3D World is being ported to the Nintendo Switch like many other Wii U games before it, but Bowser’s Fury is an entirely new portion of the game that will seemingly introduce you to a large, open-ended level with numerous platforming challenges to explore.
At some point it seems Bowser and his uncontrollable new power arrives to spoil the party, forcing Mario to team up with Bowser Jr. To take him down. If you ever hope to see a colossal kaiju-like battle between Bowser and Cat Marion, this latest trailer has you covered.
It’s unclear what the scope and size of Bowser’s Fury is and just how expansive the level on show is, but it certainly looks more explorable than most of 3D World’s traditional stages.
