Thanks in part to the Nintendo Gigaleak, the soundtrack for Super Mario World has been restored and gives fans of the classic game a chance to hear some of the most iconic songs before they were compressed for an SNES cartridge.
These tracks, which you can listen to here, were restored by a group of people and shared by @LeBrickster on Twitter and YouTube. This was made possible because the Nintendo Gigaleak included the source code for Super Mario Advance from the Game Boy Advance, which just so happened to reuse samples from Super Mario World. The samples discovered had the names for the instruments used in Super Mario World, and this helped in restoring the original tracks.
@LeBrickster also addressed complaints that the restored tracks “do not sound good” and that many “prefer the originals.” They mention that these “tracks were likely not designed with the full patches in mind.”
“What if [Koji] Kondo wasn’t limited to the small sound ram size, and he could use sounds to their fullest? We may never know if he did, of course, since no demo versions of tracks for Super Mario World were ever officially released, but these I think would be similar to such tracks.”
They also mention that this was simply done “for fun, as a ‘what if’ kinda thing,” and is meant to give the world a chance to hear what these songs may have sounded like before they were compressed for use on the SNES.
Mass Effect: Andromeda could have had up to ten new alien species, but they were cut due to budget, scope, and… cosplay considerations.
One of the biggest criticisms of Mass Effect: Andromeda was the lack of new alien species, especially when the Mass Effect Trilogy introduced us to the Krogan, Asari, Drell, Batarians, Salarians, Turians, Quarian, Prothean, Hanar, Elcor, Keepers, Volus, Collectors, Geth, Reapers, Vorcha, and more.
In our Mass Effect: Andromeda review, we said “What’s bizarre is that BioWare went to the trouble of shipping us 2.5 million light years away to introduce only two new alien races (plus some robots) over more than 50 hours of campaign and major side missions, and only one local joins your crew.”
Apparently this wasn’t the original plan, and many of the developers on Andromeda recently spoke to TheGamer to discuss why these new alien species never made it to the final game.
“I think it was a project that couldn’t have possibly lived up to expectations,” Neil Pollner, who was a senior writer on Mass Effect 3 and wrote parts of Andromeda, said. “Not just the high bar of the original trilogy, but the logical expectations anyone would have of Mass Effect going to a whole new galaxy. Because the scope of [the first] Mass Effect was so incredibly massive, there was an inherent promise that you’d be getting a massive new experience with a ton of new things in [what was supposed to be the first] Mass Effect Andromeda – new species, new lore, an entire new galaxy at your fingertips, etc.
“But we were only given the budget for two new species, plus the Remnant. Not to mention that we couldn’t even include all the Milky Way species. And we weren’t going to be able to let you travel throughout the galaxy. This meant that we had to develop the story around some pretty glaring inorganic limitations. So, not only did you get something that felt (and was) much smaller than what you got before, almost everyone playing the game probably had something that they really liked about Mass Effect that just wasn’t there.”
Pollner continued to discuss how they had grand plans in pre-production, including expanding the “first contact” experience with new aliens, but most of that work wasn’t even used.
Chris Hepler, another long-time Mass Effect writer, discussed how he proposed five or six new alien species, and ex-Bioware writer Jo Berry had also come up with a few that “were awesome.”
Dorian Kieken, who was the franchise design director at the beginning of Andromeda’s development, explained that some of the early alien concepts were “pretty out there” and that they were cut because one of Mass Effect Andromeda’s goals was to make it easy for fans to cosplay the game’s characters.
“One of the strengths of the original Mass Effect trilogy is that you can actually cosplay most of the alien characters – except the Hanar, although I wouldn’t underestimate the creativity of some cosplayers,” Kieken said. “The intention in Mass Effect Andromeda was to introduce new races that would still be in the realm of cosplay, which is probably why more crazy concepts were abandoned.”
Kieken even said that the two alien races that did make it into Andromeda gradually shifted to “cosplay-safe territory,” with the team trying to avoid “jellyfish” types of aliens.
Playing with Power: The Nintendo Story, a five-part documentary series, will premiere on Crackle on March 1, 2021.
As reported by Deadline, this new docuseries is written and directed by Video Games: The Movie’s Jeremy Snead and executive produced and narrated by The Lord of the Rings’ Sean Astin.
Playing with Power: The Nintendo Story will feature interviews from Wil Wheaton, Alison Haislip, Nintendo of America co-founder Ron Judy, Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, and the head of Xbox Phil Spencer.
“Producing and directing Playing with Power has been a lifelong ambition of mine as an artist, gamer and filmmaker,” Snead said. “To see my show not only come to life with such loving care through my team and I’s efforts but to also have the opportunity to partner with such a talented and experienced team like Screen Media and Crackle to release the series to the public has just been a dream come true.”
Astin discussed how chronicling the century-plus history of Nintendo was an “ambitious goal”, but “little by little, over four years, the series really came together. I think we’ve created a five-episode journey that will open up the world of video games and this legendary company in a way that most people have never seen.”
In celebration of the epic Godzilla vs. Kong trailer, we asked you to help us decide who the best giant movie monster of all time is. After thousands and thousands of 1v1 battles with matchups like Godzilla vs. Kong and King Ghidorah vs. Rodan, the ultimate winner has been chosen.
So, who claimed the top spot in the battle for the ultimate giant movie monster? Drumroll please…
With a 94.4% win percentage, the MonsterVerse’s Godzilla claimed victory in 14,557 of his 15,421 battles.
While some may have thought that King Kong would take second place, the King of the Apes was only able to climb to fifth place with a respectable 81.1% win percentage.
King Ghidorah from Godzilla: King of the Monsters actually claimed the number two spot with an 88.5% win percentage, followed by the Heisei Era’s Godzilla and the Millennium Era’s Godzilla. Rounding out the top 10 were the Reiwa Era’s Godzilla, the original King Ghidorah, the Showa Era’s Godzilla, Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ Rodan, and SpaceGodzilla.
Taking last place with only a 15.1% win percentage was the Giant Bird from The Giant Claw. Rounding out the bottom were the Ants from Them, the Monsters from 2010’s Monsters, Son of Godzilla’s Minilla, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’s Nancy, and The Host.
Are you wondering where your favorite giant movie monster landed, like maybe the Rancor from Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi? (It took 52nd place, sadly.) For all the rankings, you can check out the full list of where all 75 giant movie monsters who competed in this Face-Off ended up.
Hitman 3 stands as the culmination of IO Interactive’s reboot of the series, which took stealth and assassinations into a bunch of intricate, elaborate sandboxes. Though the Hitman series is done (for now), we know IOI’s next move: a James Bond game, tentatively titled Project 007. The details on what exactly that game will entail are pretty thin at the moment, but with its three most recent Hitman games essentially forming one big, expansive package, we have a lot of material through which to search for clues as to what the developer might have in mind for an interactive take on 007.
We’ve played a ton of the World of Assassination series, and some aspects of its levels seem like they could work pretty well in a 007 game. At the very least, we’ve got some ideas about which we can speculate wildly. Take a look below at our notions of how Hitman might inform James Bond when players turn in their ICA 19 for a Walther PPK.
Unconventional Solutions (To The Problem Of Killing Guys)
Most Bond adventures start with 007 visiting Q to pick up whatever new gadgets the scientists working for MI-6 have devised. So we always see Bond heading into a mission with things like a watch that hides a cutting laser or a car with an ejector seat. The thing is, those items rarely get used in a straightforward way. The ejector seat isn’t to save Bond from a wreck but to get rid of a henchman who has Bond at gunpoint.
IO’s Hitman games are all about finding unconventional ways to kill your targets, like electrocuting them with frayed wires or tricking them into leaning against faulty railings. Those intricate and interesting dispatches would be perfect if combined with Bond’s various gadgets. We know IOI is great at coming up with creative assassination scenarios, so it’s not a stretch to expect them to offer players a handful of Bond gadgets that allow for some out-of-the-box thinking for their uses.
Real Secret Agent Work
Most James Bond games have largely followed movies, and therefore, feature levels built around each one’s various action set pieces. But in reality, a lot of Bond’s work is done undercover–he’s a spy, after all. When Bond isn’t chasing down, beating up, and shooting bad guys, he’s sneaking around, locating key incriminating clues, and having cryptic conversations with super-rich villains. The middle part of most James Bond stories is the bit where he uncovers the villain’s vast plot with his unique brand of spy skills.
That’s already a lot of what happens in a Hitman mission. You know your assassination target, and you can see where they are at any given moment–but you don’t know how to get to them or how you might dispatch them without getting caught. Hitman missions are replayable to give you a chance to learn all their secrets, track where your targets go and what they do, and uncover a variety of vulnerabilities and options. IOI could put a lot of that sort of game design into the Bond format, encouraging you to use stealth, misdirection, and charm to get into high-security areas and learn important information. Hitman’s missions are extremely nonlinear in this way, so we could be looking at a non-linear Bond game as well–at least in moment-to-moment gameplay. Imagine your mission parameters and targets changing and being dictated by how good a spy you actually are.
A Secret Agent Take On Action
Hitman 3’s last mission does something pretty interesting. After three games of big missions in which it’s almost always better to avoid a fight than get trapped in one, the last level of Hitman 3 takes the restrictions off and lets you go wild with weapons. As Agent 47 makes his way to the front of a train, he’s constantly constrained in tight locations where stealth is tough, and options are few. But as always, firing weapons can be extremely dangerous since it doesn’t take much force to take 47 down. That means that, even though you’re fighting a lot more enemies than you normally would in this last level, you still need to be smart.
The final mission, Untouchable, balances sneaking, fighting, and planning in a way that shakes up the formula you’ve been dealing with for 20 missions, and it feels like something that would be right at home in a Bond game. This isn’t just a level where you shoot your way through everyone you see (although you can, in fact, do so). Some train cars are filled guards in numbers that will overwhelm you; others are patrolling in places that make them inopportune to eliminate or dispose of without getting caught. If you want to take out everyone, you have to use various tools like flashbangs, grenades, and even soda cans. Untouchable is a mission that feels like a perfect mix of Agent 47’s preternatural powers for murder and his status as a real person who must protect himself–making it seem like something that would translate extremely well into a Bond game. IOI could be testing how it’ll hit the Bond set pieces while still making him feel human (as opposed to some unstoppable super-soldier) and encourage players to rely on dealing with enemies in clever ways as well as with straight-up shooter skill.
More Story-Related Events Within Missions
In most of the Hitman missions, Agent 47 works alone. He gets tips on how to approach a mission over the radio from handler Diana Burnwood and a few others, but that’s about it. That changes in Hitman 3’s Mendoza mission, “The Farewell.” In that mission, Diana is on-site at the same party 47 is trying to infiltrate, and she’s even hanging around with one of his assassination targets. Diana can operate as a sort of partner if you choose to rely on her presence to get to your targets.
Bond movies aren’t just about Bond–he interacts with other agents, finds allies, and relies on others to help him over the course of a mission. So it’s not much of a stretch to see how The Farewell might show us what IOI is thinking in having a secret agent working with other secret agents mid-mission. Finding Diana at key moments (and in particular disguises) gives you opportunities to enlist her help to maneuver your assassination target to a particular location and set up possible kills. And if you follow through with the Mission Story called “The Tour” and the hidden follow-up one, you can see instances where there’s more of a reliance on carefully scripted events, rather than the interactions of metaphorical cogs in the larger mechanism of the entire level. The combination of a larger scripted set piece, other characters and their actions, and the opportunity to work with other agents or assets on the ground feels like a perfect mixture for a larger design philosophy for 007.
Getting Close To The Villain
As mentioned, a lot of Hitman is preparation. You can just walk up and shoot your target out in the open, but most of the time, that’s your worst possible option, and doing so will probably get you killed. Instead, you need to spend some time getting to know your target’s patterns and routines or eavesdropping on other characters to learn about the targets to try to anticipate and manipulate their actions. Hitman actually lets you learn quite a bit about the people you’re targeting through this method, fleshing out the characters to create small-scale stories within missions before you complete your objectives and carry out your assassinations.
Bond movies aren’t just about Bond–they’re also about villains who are often over-the-top in their evil schemes and brilliant machinations. Hitman has demonstrated its ability to add nuance and dimension to characters who exist for one level, just to be shot in the head (or crushed, electrocuted, thrown off a roof, and so on)–some of those characters are extremely interesting and their stories are pretty damn detailed. It seems very likely that we can expect to see IOI deploy this sort of approach (and solid writing skill) on a much larger scale on a Bond villain. With, say, 10 hours of game length, IOI has the opportunity to give us a lot more time to learn about its antagonist villain through spying, overhearing info, talking to other characters, and spending time with the villain in particular. That could mean that we could see one of the most fascinating, fleshed-out villains in the Bond pantheon.
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The Nemesis System used in the games Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War is one of the coolest open-world gameplay hooks we’ve ever seen, letting you form rivalries against non-player characters based on your previous actions. If you were hoping other games would implement it, however, that will be a lot harder to do now, as Warner Bros. has patented it.
As spotted by IGN, this week the US Patent and Trademark Office announced that a patent for the Nemesis System would be valid as of February 23. However, the page listing the issuing date is not available online at the moment.
This followed years of attempting to patent the system that went back to shortly after the release of Shadow of Mordor. A filing from 2016 described a system “for managing non-player characters and power centers in a computer game [that] are based on character hierarchies and individualized correspondences between each character’s traits or rank and events that involve other non-player characters or objects.”
In other words, it’s for the way the world reacts to your own actions. The “hierarchies” mentioned correspond to the pyramid of targets, including captains, you could kill or enslave in Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War. This created a story that would effectively be different for each player, as the characters you chose to kill or spare could have an impact on your next mission–either helping or hindering you.
It’s unclear if Warner Bros. will use this in a future game. The story of the Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War wrapped up pretty cleanly in the second game. However, it’s always possible it could be used for a completely different project.
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Red Dead Redemption 2 saw Rockstar return to the frontiers of the Wild West for a prequel to the seminal Red Dead Redemption, and as a result, it includes a range of period weaponry from 1899 such as the Smith & Wesson Volcanic Pistol, the Remington Rolling Block Rifle, and the Norwegian 1894 Krag-Jørgensen rifle.
In the above video, Jonathan Ferguson–a weapons expert and Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries–breaks down the guns of Red Dead Redemption 2 and compares them to their real-world counterparts.
With a 94.4% win percentage, the MonsterVerse’s Godzilla claimed victory in 14,557 of his 15,421 battles.
Taking last place with only a 15.1% win percentage was the Giant Bird from The Giant Claw. Rounding out the bottom were the Ants from Them, the Monsters from 2010’s Monsters, Son of Godzilla’s Minilla, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’s Nancy, and The Host.
Are you wondering where your favorite giant movie monster landed, like maybe the Rancor from Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi? (It took 52nd place, sadly.) For all the rankings, you can 
