The Dark Portal to Outland may have just opened, but many players in one of the world’s top World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Classic raiding guilds have already reached level 70.
According to Wowhead, a five-man group consisting of members of the guild Progress have claimed the title of world-first level 70s in Burning Crusade Classic, with player Hacez hitting the milestone first. Other members of Hacez’s group hit 70 shortly after. The total time to hit the game’s newly released level cap was about 13 hours.
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The group achieved the feat by stockpiling completed quests at level 60 and turning them in as soon as Burning Crusade Classic launched for some quick experience. From there, the group spammed dungeons for hours on end until hitting level 70. Progress is said to already have more than enough level 70s to begin running the game’s new 10-man and 25-man raids, putting it well on its way to achieving world first clears of Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, and Magtheridon’s Lair.
World-first feats are apparently nothing new for the guild, which achieved several world-first titles in WoW Classic, including clearing the game’s final and most-challenging raid, Naxxramas, in record time.
Burning Crusade Classic brings big changes to Blizzard’s classic MMORPG, including a whole new world to explore, the addition of flying mounts, and the introduction of the ever-popular Arena PvP mode. Some of the developers behind the game recently reflected on the landmark expansion’s lasting impact, saying the team’s decision to take a “really big, bold” step with the introduction of a whole new world for players to explore set the pace for all of World of Warcraft’s expansions going forward.
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During the ’80s, Kenner produced a line of Ghostbusters toys based on the original Real Ghostbusters cartoon. Now, Hasbro is re-releasing select toys from the line at Walmart. This includes the greatest toy toilet ever made, Fearsome Flush.
The Real Ghostbusters Kenner line was known for some out-of-the-box figures, like a football player that turned into a ghost or a friendly old lady that turned into a ghost. However, nothing seemed more haunting to a child than a toilet that has the capability to eat you while you’re doing your business.
Hasbro sent us a few of the brand-new Kenner Classics Ghostbusters toys for us to check out. This includes the Ecto-1, Bug-Eye Monster, and of course, Fearsome Flush. Check out what you need to know below along with some ordering info.
Hop on the train to yesteryear with the Ecto-1. It’s made of hard plastic, begging you to smash it against your old Crash Test Dummies cars to prove that the Ecto-1 is the superior cartoon automobile. The driver and passenger doors open up and can fit two Kenner Classics Ghostbusters figures. You could also toss one in the seat on top of the car. I guess the fourth Ghostbuster could ride in the trunk–alone. Sorry, Ray Stantz.
The back door opens up as well and is multi-functional. The chair from the roof can fit in there, so your Ghosbuster can fire it’s weapons at spooky ghosts chasing down the Ecto-1. Additionally, there’s a claw inside the back which you can use to grab spectres and drag them behind the car.
The re-release of the Bug-Eye Ghost is exactly as you remember it. It has two movable arms and no other points of articulation. However, the star of the show is the third eye that pops out on the ghost. All you have to do is smash the back of the ghost with your hand and the eye pops out.
Finally, there’s the toilet monster. Remember the toilet monster known as Fearsome Flush? It’s a toilet that’s roughly to scale with the rest of the Kenner Classics Ghostbusters figures. Imagine playing and deciding Ray Stantz needs to use the water closet. He sits down on the toilet, and it turns out to be a spooky ghost! Fearsome Flush has some wheels below it, and as you push it, the seat and back tank open up revealing the ghost.
One of the things that’s really cool about these toys is the packaging. It feels straight out of the ’80s, with the classic cartoon imagery all over the purple cards. Check out the packaging below, along with some more images of the toys. And yes, this includes Fearsome Flush in normal “toilet mode.”
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All of these new Kenner Classics Ghostbusters toys are available for purchase at Walmart. Additionally, there are more in the line you can pick up, including Slimer, Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, Ray Stantz, Peter Venkman, Winston Zeddemore, and Egon Spengler.
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Nintendo has finally confirmed the date and time of its E3 2021 Direct. The 40-minute presentation will take place on Tuesday, June 15, at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET, the final day of E3. In Nintendo’s announcement, it said that the presentation will focus “exclusively on [Nintendo Switch] software, mostly releasing in 2021.” The presentation will be followed by the Nintendo Treehouse Live show, showing off three hours of gameplay.
Nintendo E3 Direct Start Time
The Nintendo Direct for E3 2021 will be live on June 15 at 9 AM PT / 12 PM ET. Similar to previous Nintendo Direct events, the show will most likely move from announcement to announcement quickly, offering a mix of indie, third-party, and Nintendo first-party titles. While Nintendo said that the show will focus mostly on games releasing this year, however, Nintendo said the same thing about its direct in February and announced Splatoon 3 for 2022, so expect a few surprises.
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How To Watch Nintendo E3 Direct
The video will be embedded above when it’s available and will be live on GameSpot on June 15. Nintendo has not officially said where to watch the stream, however, Nintendo Direct events are typically streamed on Nintendo’s YouTube channel.
What To Expect
Nintendo is a notorious wild card when it comes to E3 announcements and this year is no exception. There are numerous rumors floating around about an upgraded Nintendo Switch, however, the announcement specifically states that the direct will focus only on software, so if the new Switch is real, it probably won’t be announced here.
E3 2021 runs from June 12-15 and is one of several gaming events this summer. The schedule so far includes Geoff Keighley’s Kickoff event on June 10, followed by Ubisoft Forward on June 12. The Xbox/Bethesda briefing is slated for June 13, with Razer’s event following on June 14.
Last week, we asked YOU to help us decide which of 149 of the most popular Shonen anime protagonists is the very best. After thousands and thousands of 1v1 battles with matchups like Goku vs. Naruto Uzumaki and Monkey D. Luffy vs. Gon Freecss, the ultimate winner has been chosen.
So, who claimed the top spot in the battle of the greatest Shonen protagonist ever? Drumroll please…
With an 81.8% win percentage, Fullmetal Alchemist’s Edward Elric claimed the top prize by securing victory in 34,085 of the 41,675 battles he was in.
Goku, one of the most popular and recognizable anime protagonists, earned second place with an 80.7% win percentage, while Naruto Uzumaki secured third place with an 80.3% win percentage. Rounding out the top 10 were Vegeta, Monkey D. Luffy, Roronoa Zoro, Tanjiro Kamado, Izuku Midoriya/Deku, All Might, and Alphonse Elric.
Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragon Ball, My Hero Academia, and One Piece each had two heroes in the top 10, while Demon Slayer’s Tanjiro Kamado rose through the ranks to be the newest character to be in the top 10.
Taking last place, with a win percentage of only 20.7%, was World Trigger’s Chika Amatori. She just narrowly beat out Ranma 1/2’s Akane Tendo for the last spot by 0.4 percentage points.
Rounding out the bottom were Tiger & Bunny’s Barnaby Brooks Jr., Major’s Goro Shigeno, Hikaru no Go’s Akira Toya, Ranma 1/2’s Ryoga Hibiki, Slayers’ Gourry Gabriev, Ranma 1/2’s Ranma Saotome, Eyeshield 21’s Sena Kobayakawa, and The Prince of Tennis’ Ryoma Echizen.
Ranma 1/2 comprised three of the bottom 10 Shonen protagonists, while sports-themed heroes Sena Kobayakawa, Ryoma Echizen, and Goro Shigeno also didn’t fare too well.
Are you wondering where your favorite Shonen protagonist landed, like maybe Shigeo Kageyama? (He took spot #37!) For all the rankings, you can check out the full list of where all 149 Shonen anime protagonists who competed in this Face-Off ended up.
Every year, WWE releases wrestlers for a variety of reasons. In 2021, many layoffs happened on April 15, seeing fan favorite wrestlers exit the company like The IIconics and Samoa Joe. Reasons for these releases are rarely given and WWE typically wishes them the best on their “future endeavors.”
WWE fans saw more mass releases on May 20 and June 2. The latter saw one of the company’s top superstars, Braun Strowman, get “future endeavored” along with Aleister Black–who was in the middle of a huge push. Both of these were quite head-scratching moments.
While this is a bummer to the average fan–seeing your favorite wrestler no longer working with WWE–there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. This is temporary. 2020 saw numerous layoffs from WWE as well, and many of those wrestlers found success outside of the company.
Below, you’ll find all the WWE wrestler releases throughout 2021, including a few stand-alone moments where a superstar requested his or her release. What you won’t find here are releases from backstage, including referees, production, etc. We’re focusing this list entirely on wrestlers.
Walmart Deals for Day is returning later this month, and it’s directly competing with Prime Day 2021, which Amazon confirmed earlier today will be June 21 and 22. Walmart Deals For Days will start earlier and run longer, going from June 20-23, according to CNET. The annual sales event will include both online-only sales via Walmart.com as well as in-store-only deals, with discounts across categories like electronics, toys, home, fashion, and beauty.
Unlike Prime Day, Walmart shoppers don’t need a membership to score deals. The retailer has teased some of the deals that will appear during its Deals for Days sale, which is promoted as “Black Friday-like savings.” According to CNET, Walmart Deals for Days will include the following discounts and more:
Walmart isn’t the only retailer looking to compete with Amazon–Target’s Deal Days sale will run from June 20-22, also overlapping with Prime Day. Both Target and Walmart announced their sales the same day that Amazon confirmed Prime Day dates.
Knockout City isn’t the dodgeball from your childhood. It’s an intense team-based multiplayer take on the grade school sport that combines simple, easy to pick up controls, with deceptively complex tactics and strategies that may be surprising coming from a game featuring this type of Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic. Its crisp, satisfying gameplay and multiplayer duels deliver all of the highs of gym class sports without the smelly uniforms or the anxiety of being picked last.
I’ve found the art style to be an acquired taste. The Bratz doll look of the characters was off-putting at first, but taken with the colorful cityscapes, the genre-defying energy of the soundtrack, and eclectic customization options, Knockout City has a charm that’s hard to deny. I love the distinctive sound each of the different balls makes when they collide with targets, particularly that hollow and familiar “bonk” of the standard red rubber variety.
The base rules of this sport are simple: your team of three or four has to eliminate the opposing team by clobbering them with balls that spawn across the maps. Players must be hit twice to be knocked out, and the first team to 10 knockouts wins.
When a ball is in your hand, you’re almost like a baseball pitcher in that there’s a shot selection aspect to every throw you make as you attempt to break your opponent’s defense, which is a simple yet powerful catch. The basic throw can be charged to a faster variation, you can throw a slow lob that can change the opponent’s timing just enough to throw them off, or you can throw wide curve balls to reach around obstacles and exploit enemy blind spots. Winning a duel is much more about that choice than it is about precision – since all aim is auto-targeted, having great on-the-run aim like in a traditional third-person shooter is a non-factor. Instead, every interaction is a matter of having better reflexes and more devious tactics in focused, tennis-like volley exchanges.
Among the strangest and most effective moves is ignoring balls completely, and instead turning yourself into one for your teammates to throw. When you “ball up” you can be tossed to eliminate opponents like normal, or supercharged to become a sort of living, guided mortar shell. These UItimate Throws cause a devastating explosion on impact, knocking out anyone caught in the blast instantly. Using players as balls is risky, though. You can be caught like any other ball and thrown back against your team, or worse, thrown off the stage for an instant knockout. And of course, should you miss with a big Ultimate Throw, you are super exposed to counter attack.
Some of the more advanced techniques, like passes that charge the ball to max speed faster or dashes that double as powerful tackles that deflect throws and disarm opponents, provide great depth that high-skill players are already starting to make use of. I’m just scratching the surface of that after a few dozen games, never going too long without using a trick shot or an Ultimate Throw to gain an advantage in a close game. Not only do all of these little maneuvers feel easy and accessible, but they all feel necessary for true dodgebrawl mastery.
Most of the stages do a great job at throwing unique environmental wrinkles into the standard play. I quickly found a favorite stage in Galaxy Burger, which features a circular spinning restaurant that begs you to make wild trick throws inside it. The Roundabout adds cars to the mix, forcing you to stay on the move at all times or get bounced around by rush hour traffic. Of course, not every gimmick becomes something worth playing around, like the transporting tubes in Back Alley Brawl, but they don’t detract from the action either.
The special balls that spawn during games have a far more dramatic impact on gameflow from match to match. Sniper balls turn games into more long-range affairs, as players can hang back and launch high speed throws from afar. Multi-balls give you three throws instead of one, turning players into rapid-fire ballers for a limited time. I love that these options are so clearly worth playing around that they can change the pace of a game by their mere presence. For instance, when I hear the ticking of a Bomb Ball, I’m far less likely to stick close to teammates just in case they become ground zero for a sudden explosion.
Knockout City’s matchmaking is a bit wonky, though. Especially in unranked Street Play, where I’ve regularly joined games mid match only to find that my whole team has already gone idle, leaving me alone to get walloped by the enemy. Pickup games are at the mercy of the random people you’re playing with, which may not give you a fair shot.
Should you need a break from the standard gameplay, Knockout City offers rotating game modes that get shuffled every week that put interesting spins on the rules. One added a sort of gold rush system where every hit causes enemies to drop diamonds that you collect to score instead of simply chasing knockouts. My favorite mode removed all the balls completely, forcing players to throw their teammates at each other instead. Ultimately, these modes are fun distractions but never more alluring than the standard three-versus-three matches for very long.
Several people who previously worked on the Shin Megami Tensei series will be announcing their new game, Monark, on June 10 in the latest issue of the Japanese game magazine, Famitsu.
On the game’s official website, there are quite a few names listed, but most of them are scribbled out. However, four names are legible, which are as follows:
Aya Nishitani (Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei writer)
Tsukasa Masuko (Composer for Shin Megami Tensei, II, If…, and Devil Summoner)
Ryutaro Ito (Writer for Shin Megami Tensei, II, If…, and Devil Summoner)
The website also has a mysterious phone number listed: 050-3204-4961. When the number is called, you can hear screams in the background with a voice saying in Japanese, “Finally, I have been waiting for you, my foolish, silly children.”
Monark is dubbed as a “new-school RPG”, and whatever that means is vague at best right now. There’s a countdown timer on the website leading up to the game’s announcement on June 10, so hopefully we’ll get plenty of information about what Monark actually is then.
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With writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman bidding farewell to Eddie Brock in the upcoming Venom #200, you might be wondering what’s next for Marvel’s Lethal Protector. Now Marvel Comics has revealed the next chapter in Venom’s ongoing story, with a brand new monthly Venom series to debut in November 2021.
The new series features quite the impressive creative team, including co-writers Al Ewing (The Immortal Hulk) and Ram V (Swamp Thing) and artist Bryan Hitch (The Ultimates). If you recall, V recently won IGN’s Best Comic Book Writer of 2020 award. The creative team also includes inker Andrew Currie and colorist Alex Sinclair.
“When my editors at Marvel reached out about taking on Venom alongside Al Ewing and Bryan Hitch, I was not prepared for the kind of creative thrill it has been ever since,” Ram V said in Marvel’s press release. “This story is going to expand and push the symbiote narrative and lore in even more unexpected and fantastic directions. It is also an utter thrill having the sort of call and response mechanic I’ve had with a writer like Al and an artist of Bryan’s caliber. Fans and new readers, strap in— you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Warning: the remainder of this article contains spoilers for King in Black #5!
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Marvel isn’t revealing much about the plot of the new series just yet. But between Hitch’s preview art and the ending of the recent King in Black crossover, we have some idea of what’s in store for the character. King in Black ended with Venom destroying the symbiote god Knull and taking control of the entire Klyntar race. The art suggests we’ll see Venom leave Earth behind (at least for a while) and guide his fellow symbiotes toward a new destiny.
King in Black also featured the resurrection of former Agent Venom Flash Thompson. It’s possible the series will focus on both characters, showing Flash’s adventures on Earth while Eddie ventures into the stars. It is worth noting these two teaser images feature different Venom costumes. That may also explain why V and Ewing are cowriting the series together, if the two are each focusing on one main character.
We’ll probably have a better idea of the new series’ direction once Venom #200 arrives on June 16. Marvel will also tease the relaunch with a new short story in the upcoming Free Comic Book Day 2021: Spider-Man/Venom #1, which releases on August 14.
Electronic Arts has hired the former general manager of Call of Duty and Destiny from Activision to become the GM of Battlefield going forward.
Byron Beede is now the SVP and GM of Battlefield, and in that role he’ll help guide the Battlefield team into the future. At Activision, he helped launch a handful of live service projects that became massively successful, including Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Mobile.
According to IGN, Beede’s main focus at EA is what comes next after this year’s new Battlefield game and the new Battlefield mobile game in 2022. He is part of the team that will ship those games, but IGN said “his focus is on the future of Battlefield” after them.
It’s no surprise to learn that Battlefield 6 will push deeper into live service, as EA has been focusing on growing this area of its business for some time. Just recently, EA announced that it made more than $4 billion from “live services,” which include microtransactions, DLC, ads, subscriptions, and more.
Beede will report to Vince Zampella, another former Activision/Call of Duty veteran who founded Titanfall and Apex Legends studio Respawn and is now also the head of DICE LA.
As for the Battlefield mobile game, it’s in development at Industrial Toys, the mobile game studio founded by Halo veteran Alex Seropian that EA acquired in 2018.
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