Author: Trafficblast

Following on the heels of Palkia‘s arrival, a few new Pokemon have begun appearing in Pokemon Go. Niantic has introduced another handful of monsters originally from the series’ fourth-generation titles, Diamond and Pearl, to the mobile game, including a couple of new evolved forms and baby Pokemon.

If you have a Sinnoh Stone, you’re now able to evolve Lickitung, Tangela, Aipom, and Yanma into their respective evolutions: Lickilicky, Tangrowth, Ambipom, and Yanmega. Additionally, male Kirlia can be evolved into the Psychic/Fighting Pokemon Gallade, while female Snorunt can be evolved into Froslass.

A handful of new monsters can also be found in the wild. You’ll now have a chance of encountering Combee, Glameow, and the fossil Pokemon Shieldon and Cranidos out in the field. Happiny, Mime Jr., and Bonsly–the baby forms of Chansey, Mr. Mime, and Sudowoodo, respectively–also now have a chance of hatching from certain Eggs.

Along with the new Pokemon, Niantic has made some notable changes to Raid Battles. As the developer detailed on the official Pokemon Go website, Raid bosses will now have more HP “to offset some of the damage increases made to the attacks of other Pokémon in the last year.” Niantic has also made balance changes for various moves in Trainer Battles, and certain Pokemon are now capable of learning new attacks.

The aforementioned Legendary Pokemon Palkia will appear in Raid Battles until February 28. Meanwhile, the next Pokemon Go Community Day is scheduled to take place on Saturday, February 16. The featured Pokemon this month will be Swinub.

Microsoft has announced a ton of anime deals for February. There are some massive deals live right now for Funimation movies and TV series that will last until February 4, but several less aggressive discounts will continue for the rest of the month.

Until February 4, the Dragon Ball Z movies Battle of Gods–which is offered in the original Japanese and dubbed–and Resurrection F are discounted to $3 and $4 respectively. In Resurrection F’s case, it’s actually cheaper to buy the movie than it is to rent it. For even more Dragon Ball Z, Microsoft is offering the first season for free until February 4, and you can buy the other eight seasons at the discounted price of $7 each. Goku and his friend’s story continues in Dragon Ball Super, and Microsoft is selling the first five seasons of the series at a 63 percent discount each.

Every other Funimation series on sale until February 4 is an ecchi anime, so expect a ton of sexual fan service and partial nudity. Of the lot, Prison School and Keijo are probably the two noticeable standouts, although Rosario + Vampire and My First Girlfriend is a Gal are worth looking at if you’re a fan of harem romantic comedies. The full list of anime on sale until February 4 is outlined below.

Microsoft’s Funimation Anime Sale

Movies

• Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods
• Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F

TV Series

• Dragon Ball Super
• Dragon Ball Z
• Cat Planet Cuties
• My First Girlfriend is a Gal
• Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid
• Prison School
• Rosario + Vampire
• Seven Mortal Sins
• Ikki Tousen
• Keijo
• Freezing

Throughout the rest of February, there are dozens of other anime series and movies on sale as well. Unlike the Funimation anime above, these other titles are only 40 percent off, as opposed to 60 or more. That’s still a pretty good deal though, especially for grabbing quality titles like 2017’s In This Corner of the World, 2018’s Napping Princess, or the entirety of Digimon Adventure Tri. Seasons of Naruto Shippuden, One-Punch Man, Sword Art Online, and Hunter x Hunter are on sale as well. There are too many good deals to list them all here, but we’ve outlined the best ones below.

Microsoft’s February Anime Sale

Movies

• Digimon Adventure Tri: 6-Film
• Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal
• Boruto: Naruto The Movie
• Blame! Movie
• Fireworks
• In This Corner of the World
• Napping Princess

TV Series

• Yu-Gi-Oh!
• Death Note
• Sword Art Online
• Naruto
• Naruto Shippuden
• Hunter x Hunter
• One Punch Man
• Cardcaptor Sakura
• The Prince of Tennis

A recent patch for Fallout 76 reintroduced problems that had already been fixed in a previous patch. But in an ironic twist, Bethesda’s hotfix to take care of the issue again introduced a bug that’s even worse. The problem appears to be ongoing, so it’s difficult to tell when a new fix will be issued to fix the issues caused by the fix to the fix.

Rock Paper Shotgun reports that when Patch 5 rolled out, it brought back issues that had already been fixed in Patch 4, such as making bobby pins much heavier than they should be. The company issued a mea culpa and quickly sent out a hotfix, but that seems to have introduced a new bug that trashes crafting materials.

Users on the Fallout 76 subreddit noticed that the autoscrapping system isn’t working as intended, and many complain that they’ve lost materials that they had converted to bulk. The studio hasn’t given any further updates on when to expect the latest issue to be resolved.

Fallout 76 has had a history of unintended problems both in and outside the game. A recent bug temporarily disabled nukes, an important late-game feature. Outside of the game, Bethesda was heavily criticized for misleading advertisements about a special edition canvas bag, and then in its attempt to make right and provide the bags, it leaked users’ personal data. This was on top of the generally low review scores that the game suffered upon release.

The studio is still forging ahead with plans to keep supporting it, however. It has announced updates coming this year including a new mode without PvP restrictions, and the ability to run your own shop.

The Last Word, one of Destiny‘s best Exotic guns, is now a part of Destiny 2, thanks to a new mission called The Draw. But if you’re looking for older Exotics, another weekend means another chance to hit up Xur to buy some of the best gear in Bungie’s shooter. Check out the video above to see where Xur is and what he’s offering this week–you can also read all the details in our text guide.

Meanwhile, if you need some help maximizing your time trying to get The Last Word, we’ve got a guide for you there, too. The story around the gun is actually one of the most interesting in Destiny’s lore, and concerns another iconic weapon: Thorn. Read our lore rundown about the sordid history of the two weapons, and get hyped–Bungie teased the return of Thorn in the Season of the Drifter, the upcoming Destiny 2 season that starts in March.

Nintendo is partnering with Illumination Entertainment, the company behind Despicable Me and the Minions movie, to produce an animated film based on the Super Mario series. The project was formally announced last January following a report by the Wall Street Journal, and now Nintendo has revealed when it’s expected to hit theaters.

In Nintendo’s financial results briefing, president Shuntaro Furukawa announced that development on the Super Mario movie is “moving along for an anticipated theatrical release around 2022.” Nintendo didn’t share any other new details about the film, but it has previously been confirmed that Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto will be producing.

This, of course, isn’t the first feature film to be based on the Mario series. A live-action Super Mario Bros. movie released in 1993 and was a critical and commercial failure. Bob Hoskins, the late actor who portrayed Mario in the film, called it the worst movie he’s ever been a part of. Nintendo, likely wary of another flop, has said it may abandon the animated film if it isn’t “interesting” enough.

The animated Super Mario movie is part of Nintendo’s new initiative to leverage its IP beyond video games. Nintendo is also partnering with Universal Studios Japan to build a Super Nintendo Land theme park, which is slated to “open in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.” On top of that, Nintendo has announced it is opening an official Nintendo Tokyo store in Japan this fall.

Despite these new initiatives, Furukawa reaffirmed that Nintendo will remain first and foremost a video game company. “Nintendo’s core business will continue to be the integrated hardware-software video game platform business,” he said in the financial results briefing. The company has a number of big exclusives for Switch lined up for this year, including a new Animal Crossing game and a “core” Pokemon RPG.

Nintendo also has multiple smartphone games on the way. The company recently announced a Dr. Mario mobile game, which is due out early summer. However, its Mario Kart mobile game, which was originally scheduled to launch by the end of March, has been delayed.

As January comes to a close, Twitch has unlocked five new games that you can download for free during February. Once the month ends, you’re out of luck. But if you download them now, you can keep ’em forever. As always, you’ll need a Twitch Prime subscription (which comes with an Amazon Prime membership) to claim them, but at $11 USD a month, you’re actually getting all five titles for less than their combined retail price.

Pikuniku is the noticeable stand-out this time around. Added to Twitch Prime games in late January on the day it released, the adorable title looks like a children’s book come to life, and yet it utilizes a more sarcastic, irreverent tone to tell its story of a town battling a corporate takeover–one that’s sure to resonate with an older crowd. In our Pikuniku review, James O’Connor gave the game an 8/10, writing, “From Piku’s weird wobbly gait and looping jumps in the opening right through to the game’s funny, bizarre ending, Pikuniku is more gripping than its simple aesthetic and playful tone would suggest. It’ll make you feel like a kid again.”

Until February 28, you can also download Dear Esther: Landmark Edition, Downwell, The Flame in the Flood, and Draknek & Co Puzzle Collection. You might remember Dear Esther as the game that popularized the “walking sim” genre, and this special edition of the game comes with remastered audio and developer commentary. Downwell is a fun roguelike for its simplicity, and you can just keep jumping down its randomly assorted pits for hours. The Flame in the Flood is also a roguelike, but one geared towards survival as opposed to fast-paced action. Finally, Draknek is a collection of three puzzle games, the chemistry-focused Sokobond, the building-focusing A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build, and the frustrating but cute Cosmic Express.

Twitch Prime’s Free Games For January 2019

• Pikuniku
• Dear Ester: Landmark Edition
• Downwell
• The Flame in the Flood
• Draknek & Co Puzzle Collection

It’s been something of a rough week for Xbox Live, which has encountered issues on multiple occasions (including one particularly severe incident). That’s again the case today for Xbox One and PC owners, as sign-in issues have emerged on Friday that Microsoft says it’s working to resolve.

While sign-in problems sound somewhat innocuous, that can mean you’re unable to get online to play games like Fortnite or to even access certain content. In a tweet, Microsoft’s support account stated, “If you’re running into errors attempting to sign in or access previously purchased content, our teams are aware and working to identify the cause. We’ll update here when we have more to provide.”

The Xbox Live status page doesn’t offer much more information, except to confirm that both Xbox One and Xbox services on Windows 10 in the “core services” category are impacted. Besides the sign-in problems, you might also have trouble creating or managing an account right now.

There’s no word on exactly when the problems will be resolved; as always, it could be a very short wait or a matter of hours. Some small consolation is that these problems don’t appear as serious as those earlier in the week, which caused some users to receive a black screen when powering the system on. This rendered it completely unusable, though some reports suggested that disconnecting the system from the internet would allow offline functionality to resume.

We’ll report back with any further details as Microsoft shares them.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s first DLC character, Piranha Plant, arrived this week alongside the big 2.0.0 update. Nintendo offered the new fighter for free to players who purchased and registered their games on My Nintendo by January 31, but if you missed your opportunity to get it, you now have the option to buy it.

Piranha Plant is now available to purchase in the Switch Eshop. Unlike the other planned DLC characters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Piranha Plant isn’t included in the game’s Fighters Pass, so you only have the option to pick it up individually. If you do want to add it to your roster, it costs $5–slightly cheaper than the price of other upcoming fighters, presumably because it doesn’t come with a new stage and music tracks.

Beyond Piranha Plant, Nintendo is working on five other DLC characters for Smash Bros. Ultimate. The first of these will be Joker from Persona 5. Each new fighter will come in a pack alongside a stage and multiple music tracks for $6. You’ll also be able to get all of them at a discount through the $25 Fighters Pass. Picking up the Fighters Pass will also get you a bonus Mii costume based on Rex from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

All of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s DLC characters are slated to arrive by February 2020. Nintendo hasn’t officially revealed the identities of the remaining four fighters yet, but during the Game Awards in December, NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime teased they will all be newcomers to the series and characters “who you wouldn’t anticipate.”

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate launched for Nintendo Switch on December 7 and has set new sales records for the series. Not only was it Amazon’s best-selling video game of 2018 (and the US’s fifth best-selling game) despite launching near the end of the year, it has already sold 12 million copies around the world, making it Nintendo’s third best-selling Switch game to date.