Author: Trafficblast

Square Enix has revealed that The World Ends With You has become an anime project, and is currently in the works.

A newly-created TWEWY “The Animation” Twitter account notes that a full reveal of the project is coming during Anime Expo Lite on Friday, July 3 at 6pm Pacific / 9pm Eastern (that’s July 4 at 2am UK / 11am AEST).

Anime Expo Lite will be a free livestream this year – it previously teased a collaboration with The World Ends With You during its key art reveal back in late May. You can check out the full TWEWY “The Animation” website here, which features a countdown and a glimpse at the 104 building, an iconic set piece from the 2007 Nintendo DS game, set in the Shibuya ward in Tokyo.

”The Animation”https://t.co/n6wDYuZhLg#TWEWY#すばらしきこのせかい

— すばらしきこのせかい The Animation 公式アカウント (@TWEWY_PR) June 25, 2020

If you’ve never heard of The World Ends With You before, it’s a one-off Square Enix RPG with a massive cult following. The game breathes Shibuya youth culture and was worked on by Final Fantasy and Kingdom Heart’s character designer Tetsuya Nomura. Characters from the game have featured in Kingdom Hearts games since its release, such as 3DS spin-off Dream Drop Distance.

A port of the game was revealed in early 2018 and has since launched on the Nintendo Switch. You can check out our review of the port here, which we called “simultaneously a good port and a bad one.” If you need some more convincing, here’s an opinion piece detailing why you should care about The World Ends With You.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Pokemon Go‘s solstice celebration has ended, but a new event is underway in the game. The Bug Out is now live until 10 PM local time on July 1, giving you a chance to catch lots of Bug types and earn other rewards.

Throughout the event, Bug Pokemon like Scyther, Venipede, and Dwebble will be appearing in the wild and Raid Battles much more often than usual, and you’ll have a greater chance of hatching Bug types from 5 km eggs. You’ll also have your first opportunity to catch another new Shiny Pokemon: Shiny Dwebble.

Additionally, certain Bug Pokemon will be lured out by Incense at specific times during the event. You’ll have a much better chance of attracting the following Pokemon during the specified time frames when you use an Incense:

• June 26 (8 AM) – June 27 (11:59 PM): Nincada
• June 28 (12 AM) – June 29 (11:59 PM): Wurmple
• June 30 (12 AM) – July 1 (10 PM): Scyther

Finally, there will be event-exclusive Field Research tasks to complete during the Bug Out, and you’ll earn twice the usual amount of XP for catching Pokemon. You can read more details about the event on the official Pokemon Go website.

As part of the Bug Out, Niantic originally planned to hold a special Raid Day featuring Pinsir on June 28. However, that event has been canceled.

Niantic has more summer events planned for Pokemon Go following the Bug Out. Starting July 3, the studio will kick off a series of weekly challenges leading up to Pokemon Go Fest 2020, and completing enough of these will unlock additional Pokemon to catch during Go Fest weekend. A Pokemon Go anniversary and summer event are also on the horizon.

In other Pokemon Go news, Galarian Farfetch’d recently made its debut in the game. Niantic has also announced that Mega Evolution will come to the game later this year.

GameSpot has officially kicked off Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts and Black Lives Matter with the help of our friends from around the gaming world. Check out the Play For All schedule for more.

Given the year is now 2020, you likely don’t expect to see a lot of new games coming for Wii or Wii U, save for perhaps the obligatory ports of the latest entry in Ubisoft’s Just Dance series. However, in news that will have you checking to make sure it’s not April 1, a new, non-Just Dance game is on the way for the two Nintendo consoles that preceded the Switch, and it’s releasing quite soon.

The game is Shakedown: Hawaii, a retro-style open-world action game in the vein of the early Grand Theft Auto entries. It originally released on a number of platforms last year–notably including PlayStation Vita–but is now coming to Wii and Wii U seemingly due to a random impulse on the part of the developer.

“Like most of my ports, Shakedown: Hawaii on Wii began one Friday night on a whim of curiosity,” wrote developer Vblank. “Perhaps a jolt of Wii nostalgia rushed through me that evening, but I suddenly wondered… how long would it actually take to port? How would it feel to play with a Wii Remote? How would it look in 4:3? Would it hit 60 FPS right off the bat, or need optimization? I had many questions, but as soon as I held that Wii Remote and started playing, I knew I wanted to take it to the finish line.”

However, while Vblank says that many ports for discontinued platforms get started, they don’t necessarily end up seeing the light of day. In this case, however, they will: The Wii version launches on July 9, with the Wii U version (and a Steam port of the existing PC version) set for sometime in August.

The Wii edition is limited to 3,000 copies and will be sold for $30. Unfortunately, those in North America won’t be able to play it, at least easily–despite working with Nintendo of America, given the age of the platform, a disc-based release couldn’t be worked out. (Wii discs aren’t region free, so importing would require you to have a PAL region system to play it on.) However, Nintendo of Europe was able to make this a reality, and those 3,000 copies will go on sale at 6 PM BST on July 9.

A digital Wii release also couldn’t happen given the Wii Shop has been shut down (and thus robbing us of the pleasure of one last Update Day.) That’s where the Wii U version comes in–this release will be available even in North America. A precise release date has not yet been announced.

In terms of what to expect, this is the full version of Shakedown: Hawaii that’s available on other platforms, even including post-launch updates. But there are some new features, with the game offering support for the 4:3 aspect ratio. On Wii, you can play with the Wii Remote (with shake support), Classic Controller, Classic Controller Pro, or GameCube controller. The Wii U version supports the GamePad, Pro Controller, Wii Remote, Classic Controller, and Classic Controller Pro, with the ability to play entirely on the GamePad with touch controls, if you so choose.

Work has also been done to ensure the disc-based nature of these versions didn’t result in new load times. “I took special care to ensure it parallels the experience of the more powerful platforms, and further optimized it to fit entirely into the Wii system memory,” Vblank said. “This means that you won’t experience any disc load times during gameplay. Once the game boots, you’re in!”

If you’re sitting in a chair right now, and there’s a good chance you are, ask yourself “could this seat be more dynamic and futuristic?” The answer is almost certainly “yes,” and the good news is you can actually make your futuristic-sitting dreams a reality with the limited-edition Cyberpunk 2077 chair from Secret Labs.

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You can actually choose between the OMEGA and the TITAN 2020 series chairs, depending on your size. Both have unmistakable Cyberpunk 2077 branding: neon yellow on the backrest accented with “electrical traces and cybernetic augmentation slots,” as well as the Samurai logo embroidered on the back of the chair.

What I’m saying here is this is a really cool chair, and it’s available only in limited quantities (it’s already sold out in the UK, sorry chaps).

If you want to preorder Cyberpunk 2077, it’s currently on sale for $49.95. During yesterday’s Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire livestreaming event, we learned both the Xbox One and PS4 versions will be eligible for a free upgrade to their next-gen versions, which is extremely excellent news.

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Seth Macy is Executive Editor, IGN Commerce, and just wants to be your friend. Find him on Twitter @sethmacy.

Microsoft has announced that it will be permanently closing all of its retail stores, while four physical locations in London, NYC, Sydney, and Redmond will be re-imagined as Microsoft Experience Centers.

Microsoft announced the news and said that “the company’s retail team members will continue to serve customers from Microsoft corporate facilities and remotely providing sales, training, and support.”

Microsoft has told The Verge that no layoffs will result from today’s decision. Microsoft closed its retail stores in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and had yet to re-open them.

Since then, there focus has obviously shifted to its digital storefronts on Microsoft.com and the stores on both Xbox and Windows PC, which “reach more than 1.2 billion people every month in 190 markets.”

“We deliberately built teams with unique backgrounds and skills that could serve customers from anywhere. The evolution of our workforce ensured we could continue to serve customers of all sizes when they needed us most, working remotely these last months,” Microsoft Corporate Vice Pesident David Porter said in a statement. “Speaking over 120 languages, their diversity reflects the many communities we serve. Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this talent pool is stronger than ever.”

In April, Microsoft explained its plan to take care of its employees in this changed world we are living in, saying how many employees had already shifted to remote work and had how it had continued to “provide regular pay for team members through the pandemic.”

This news arrives in the same year as the launch of Microsoft’s newest console, the Xbox Series X, which is expected to be released in Holiday 2020.

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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.

Netflix has shared an inside peek at The Cuphead Show in a new video that offers fans a closer look at the show’s animation style.

The streaming giant invited fans to take a behind-the-scenes look at the “intricate, nostalgic design” of the animated series in a new teaser shared on Twitter. The short video showcases character concept art for Cuphead (Tru Valentino) and his brother Mugman (Frank Todaro), together with Fleischer-style scenes that have been created to tell the tale of Cuphead, who is described as a “lovable scamp.”

Take an inside peek at the intricate, nostalgic design of The Cuphead Show! pic.twitter.com/EF0kpAi973

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) June 26, 2020

The show’s “ragtag tribe of enthusiastic artists and animators” provide an insightful commentary over the footage, with the team sharing details of everything involved in the creative process, from character creation and storyboarding to the role of the voice actors. The video concludes with another look at the official poster for the series, followed by a “coming soon” title card.

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“Reimagining the Fleischer style with these incredibly relatable siblings is gonna be pretty fresh and new,” executive producer CJ Kettler promised in one clip, while art director Andrea Fernandez suggested that the show would “bring you back to the wonder of childhood.”

Similarly to its video game counterpart, The Cuphead Show will follow the unique misadventures of the world’s colourful characters through 1930s-style animation, however, it will not be a retelling of the game. The character-driven comedy will be hand-drawn, though not entirely to paper this time, and not by Studio MDHR themselves, but rather Netflix’s own in-house animation studio.

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Netflix’s The Cuphead Show does not have a release date yet, so, for now, you’ll have to stick to playing the game.

In our review of the Cuphead game, we praised both its incredible hand-drawn graphics and its meticulous co-op challenge. Though it originally released as an Xbox One game and a PC game, it has since been ported to Nintendo Switch and, as IGN exclusively reported, it’s also on the way to Tesla vehicles as well. It has sold over 4 million copies so far.

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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

It’s ludicrously hot (read: a bit hot) in the UK right now, and it isn’t helping our general state of “melted” that all these exciting games are being shown off at the moment. This week, Jesse, Matt and Joe discuss the finer points of Cyberpunk 2077 after Night City Wire and a swather of previews. We also touch base on Marvel’s Avengers, which impressed us in its possibilities.

Alongside that, we’ve got thoughts on The Sinner, Snowpiercer and the Harley Quinn TV show, not to mention a new Endless Search favourite, and your excellent emails. Remember, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, please do: [email protected].

IGN UK Podcast #545: Cyberpunk! Avengers! Ice Creams!

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• IGN UK Podcast #544: Skate, Squadrons and Surgery!
• IGN UK Podcast #543: Our PS5 Reveal Reactions
• IGN UK Podcast #542: The Last of Us Part 2 Preview Impressions (No Spoilers Don’t Worry)
• IGN UK Podcast #541: Your Snyder Cut Feedback

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