Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has smashed a record, knocking out a new peak viewership number for concurrent viewers at this weekend’s Evo 2019 tournament. The latest Smash game closed out Evo as the main event this year for the first time, though Smash Bros. Melee has been a longtime favorite at the annual fighting game tournament.
Twitter user Rod Breslau noted the record with a screenshot, pointing out it had hit 279,000 concurrent viewers. That topples the previous record holder, Dragon Ball FighterZ, set in 2018 with more than 257,000 concurrent viewers, via Twin Galaxies. At the time that was also the all-time high, so some of this boost for Smash Bros. could show an increasing popularity for the Evo tournament.
Smash Bros. has been a regular staple in some form since 2007, when Melee was added to the lineup. Since then Melee has remained a near-constant presence at Evo, while others like Brawl and Smash 4 have come and gone. This year Ultimate was the only Smash Bros. representation on the main schedule, as Melee was given its own side-tournament.
Most recently, Smash Bros. Ultimate issued the 4.0 update, which introduced a ton of fighter changes and the new Dragon Quest Hero character. That character, along with Joker from the Persona series and the upcoming Banjo-Kazooie character from their titular series, can be obtained individually as DLC or as a bundle with the Fighter Pass.
If I had to think of a single item from my childhood that carries the highest concentration of imbued nostalgia, it’d be a Pokemon card. Doesn’t matter which one. You could hand me a beaten-up Base Set Diglett and I’d be overwhelmed with Pocket Monster memories. I can remember my first booster pack, my best holographics, and those trades I always regretted. The reason those things stick with me all comes down to one thing: the art. For over 20 years, the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) has delivered thousands of bespoke Pokemon designs that are exclusive to the format. It’s like collecting miniature works of art that you curate in ring-bound galleries, mounted in plastic pocket pages rather than on walls.
I have been fascinated with Pokemon cards ever since they debuted on my school playground in 1999. So when I heard legendary artist Mitsuhiro Arita was in town, I jumped at the chance to sit down with him and talk about his inspiration, method, and most importantly, what he thinks of “chubby” Pikachu.
Mitsuhiro Arita, long-time artist for the Pokemon Trading Card Game
With over 600 Pokemon cards in his portfolio, it’s extremely likely you’ve seen Arita’s work. It spans the entirety of the TCG, from the original holographic Charizard to the recent Tag Team cards, where powerful Pokemon team up and drop massive amounts of damage on your opponent. With the next generation of Pokemon on the horizon as part of Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, I had to ask how he approaches the brand-new creatures.
When a new Pokemon is announced, the first artwork we see is usually by series veteran Ken Sugimori. But it turns out there isn’t much collaboration at all between Pokemon artists, as it’s mostly freelancers working on the card series. After an initial brief from Creatures, Inc, the company that produces the Pokemon Trading Card Game, they’re left to come up with their own impression of a monster. Arita did say that he would love to collaborate with Sugimori, or many of the other Pokemon artists, which is something I’d personally love to see.
So what does inspire Arita when it comes to bringing Pikachu or Mewtwo to life on a blank canvas? “It’s actually a lot better to look at real life,” Arita said. “When you see an illustration it will inevitably reflect that artist’s world view, from a creative way of thinking, so it’s perhaps not so good for stimulating your own kind of different, new, free thoughts.” Arita explained that he watches a lot of BBC nature documentaries and films for inspiration, which surely helps the Pokemon he draws feel more like living, breathing creatures. Anyone who follows Arita on Twitter will know that he has spent a lot of his recent time in Europe at museums, sketching ancient artifacts and sculptures, soaking in dozens of different cultures.
Speaking of Europe, the Galar region of Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield is loosely based on the United Kingdom, so I asked Arita if his trip would have any influence on future cards he works on. “The knowledge of the environment and architecture of European countries is an inspiration, especially the sense of the scale of the architecture.” While Arita couldn’t go into any detail on upcoming Pokemon cards we might see alongside the release of Sword and Shield, it’s clear that his travels in Europe will have some kind of influence on his art for the Pokemon TCG.
Arita has been heavily involved in the recent Tag Team sets, with Team Up, Unbroken Bonds, and the new Unified Minds expansion, where the strongest Pokemon share a card and combine their powers. Zekrom and Pikachu, Reshiram and Charizard, or as we see in the new set, Mewtwo and Mew, are just a few of the dream teams. But the artist doesn’t get a say in which Pokemon are paired up.
“The top priority really is from the game designers at Creatures, and they think about how those Pokemon work in the actual gameplay,” Arita explained. Arita went on to add that The Pokemon Company might also have some influence on which Pokemon are chosen, depending on current popularity. This might explain the team-up of Slowpoke and Psyduck, which is now, in my opinion, the greatest Pokemon card ever created, regardless of how playable it actually is. Either way, whatever request comes Arita’s way, he says he’s happy to think about how to bring out each monster’s best side.
Left: Mewtwo-GX from Shining Legends. Right: Mewtwo & Mew-GX from Tag Team
The flagship team-up for Unified Minds is the legendary Mewtwo and Mew, who capped off the original 151 Pokemon, and I happen to know that Mewtwo is Arita’s favorite Pokemon. “There’s a story behind this card,” he said. Those with a keen eye may have already noticed, but the art for this new card is a callback to one of Arita’s previous works in the Shining Legends set, Mewtwo-GX, which he was particularly proud of. It’s a stunning piece of art showing Mewtwo held captive in a laboratory–a must-have for collectors. Arita then pointed out that some of the background details match those in the Mewtwo & Mew-GX from the latest set, so fans can deduce that Mew has come to the rescue and broken Mewtwo out of captivity. This wasn’t requested by Creatures; instead, it’s an extra level Arita has added to this card to bring it to life.
This isn’t the only example of themes and stories hidden within Arita’s art. Over 15 years ago he worked on an Umbreon card for the Aquapolis set. In this art, Umbreon is sat atop a roof across from a distinctive clocktower, and this very same clocktower features in the art for the new Umbreon & Darkrai-GX card. “You get kind of sucked into the story, and fans develop their own theories. It’s more a kind of participative way of designing these new card illustrations.”
Left: Umbreon’s clocktower. Right: the new Pokemon Melmetal
The hardest part of creating art for a Tag Team card is actually trying to fit everything in since those cards contain a lot of text. Arita talked me through an example with Lucario & Melmetal-GX, a card featuring both a very popular Pokemon and a very new one. “Everyone knows Lucario, they know what Lucario looks like. So you don’t have to show the whole of Lucario for people to get the idea. With Melmetal, even though he is so huge and really difficult to actually fit onto the card, I thought I really should show as much as possible of this new Pokemon or everyone will just be like, ‘What is this?'” Arita went on to explain how he had to work hard to make this particular combination work and ended up putting a lot of emphasis on Melmetal’s head, which, after all, is just a nut with a ball for an eye hovering inside. “I tried to make it so that even if you look at it from a distance you could see that, and it stood out to make it even more easy to understand what that was.”
Fascinated by Arita’s latest work, I couldn’t end without asking about one of his first cards– card 58 from the first set of the Pokemon Trading Card Game, Pikachu. It’s now lovingly known as “chubby” or “fat” Pikachu, since the more recent versions of the electric rodent are a lot slimmer. But which does Arita prefer now?
“I prefer rounder Pikachu,” he promptly told me, before explaining how it’s difficult to attain the perfect roundness of Pikachu when drawing digitally, and it’s much easier to go back to traditional methods to achieve that “soft feeling.” Looking at Arita’s Pikachu art over the years, I couldn’t help but feel that he had managed to capture the same playful and happy side of Pikachu each time. I asked him if this was his own personal version of Pikachu. “Not really just limited to Pikachu, but in general I feel like Pokemon aren’t really dark, negative, or depressing. They’re happy, they’re joyful. So I think that feeling has just kind of come out and expressed itself in these cards.”
Just a few of Arita’s Pikachu cards
The latest expansion for the Pokemon Trading Card Game, Sun & Moon: Unified Minds, is available now, with Arita’s art featuring on booster packs and many of the new Tag Team Pokemon-GX cards. Speaking to Arita was an absolute pleasure, and I now have a new level of appreciation for the craft of designing a Pokemon card. Next time you crack open a booster pack, take a little more time to look at each card and see if you can spot the influences and hidden stories lovingly illustrated on those 2.5″ by 3.5″ works of art.
The survival game Vigor will be free-to-play on Xbox One the weekend of August 8, Bohemia Interactive has announced. The free weekend will let you sample the Xbox timed exclusive game, currently in early access (or “Game Preview,” as Xbox calls it) to put it through its paces.
The free period will last through August 11, and comes right alongside the recent 0.9 Update. That update, nicknamed “Aid,” made big changes to the shooting mechanics and introduced new features like weapon skins, daily challenges, customization, spectator mode, gestures, and more.
So far more than half a million players have tried Vigor, and Bohemia says this free weekend is aimed at expanding the player base and testing new features ahead of its free-to-play release coming later this summer. If you enjoy the free time and want to keep playing, you can purchase a Founder’s Pack for $20 / 20 Euro and get some extra loot.
Vigor is a survival game set in Norway, from the studio behind DayZ. Bohemia previously explained that Sony’s lack of an early access program led it to launch Vigor exclusively for Xbox, at least at first. It will come to PS4 sometime later. A PC release has not been announced.
With crunch becoming an increasingly hot-button topic in the games industry, many developers are speaking out against the ruthless work environments employees at high-profile studios like Epic Games and Rockstar routinely face. The Outer Worlds developer Obsidian Entertainment is one such studio, saying it is “very committed” to keeping its work environment crunch-free.
In an interview with PCGamesN, The Outer Worlds’ senior designer, Brian Hines, said crunch is not in the studio’s development formula. “Obsidian is not a crunch studio, which is one of the things that keeps people staying there for a long time,” Hines said. Though he admitted employees are sometimes asked to stay longer in order “to meet a deadline,” Hines assured that these extra hours were “always [just] a request” and last for only “a week or so.”
Hines also confirmed the individual developers always have the right to exercise their autonomy, declining the request if they so choose. “There really hasn’t been a crunch or a death march or anything like that with the studio for quite a long time, as far as I can remember anyway,” Hines said. “That’s definitely one of the things that as a studio we’re very committed to. [W]e’d rather cut something than try and get people to not have a life outside of the industry.”
Let’s face it: Space is scary. Between the endless, uncaring void, the potential for chest-bursting aliens, and the omnipresent threat of catastrophic tech failure and accident, the cosmos itself is already horrific enough just on its own. But, if you needed yet another reason to be made extremely uncomfortable by the prospect of the abyss–don’t worry. Variety has reported that Paramount and Amazon are teaming up to develop a TV adaptation of the 1997 sci-fi horror classic, Event Horizon.
Though no details are currently available, it has been reported that Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs. Kong, Blair Witch, You’re Next) will be leading the charge. Whether or not the show will be a reboot of the movie, a continuation of the story set within the same universe, or something else entirely remains a mystery.
Originally directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the man responsible for bringing us the first live-action Mortal Kombat movie, Event Horizon featured Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburn on an ill-fated space mission that, eventually, culminated in them piercing the cosmic barriers between our reality and a horrifying hell-dimension, all while trying to run a rescue mission on a derelict space ship. That’s right: Neill and Fishburn were sent to Space Hell, and it went about as well (and as brutally) as you could imagine.
One part Alien, one part Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, ten parts Hellraiser, Event Horizon blurred the lines between the metaphysical realms of spirituality, ghosts, and demons with the hard facts of scientific theory and space-age engineering with all the charm and practical effects of its late-’90s era.
Almost every day, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, or Shudder deliver brand-new content to subscribers. This week, the three latter companies have something coming out during every day of the week. Here’s what you can watch on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and AMC’s horror service Shudder.
Amazon Prime Video doesn’t have a lot coming out this week. The majority of the content from that service arrives in the second half of the month. However, the streaming service is premiering a new documentary series you may want to check out. On Friday, Season 1 of Free Meek will be released. The docuseries follows the 2017 arrest of rapper Meek Mill for a probation violation. Additionally, the series delves into justice reform and police corruption.
The biggest release on Hulu this week is Season 3A of Attack on Titan. The anime series follows humans trying to survive in a walled-off city while expressionless, gigantic humanoids try to force their way in and eat everyone. Don’t get attached to any of the characters though because everyone tends to meet their demise at some point. The new season arrives on Tuesday.
And if you’ve been following streaming news the past couple of weeks, then you know I cannot shut up about Slumber Party Massacre II, coming to Shudder on Monday. A wonderful, cheesy, insane ’80s-slasher film, SPM2 follows a group of young women who go to a condo over the weekend to have practice with their rockin’ band, but they all end up getting stalked by a rockabilly murderer with a giant drillbit on his guitar. This movie is a masterpiece. You’re welcome for the suggestion.
Below, you’ll find everything coming to the aforementioned streaming services. Make sure to check out what’s coming to Netflix this week as well.
New To Amazon, Hulu, And Shudder this week:
Monday, August 5
Hulu
The Kleptocrats (2018)
Shudder
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982, Amy Holden Jones)
Slumber Party Massacre II (1987, Deborah Brock)
Tuesday, August 6
Hulu
Apollo: Mission to the Moon: Special (National Geographic)
Attack on Titan: Complete Season 3A (Funimation)
Bachelor in Paradise: Season 6 premiere (ABC)
Plus One (2018)
Swan Princess: Kingdom of Music (2017)
The Swan Princess: Kingdom of Music (2019)
Wednesday, August 7
Amazon Prime Video
All I See Is You (2016)
Hulu
The Armstrong Tapes: Special (National Geographic)
Thursday, August 8
Hulu
Apollo: Back to the Moon: Special (National Geographic)
BH90210: Series Premiere (FOX)
Mortdecai (2015)
Shudder
NOS4A2 (2019) — New episodes on Thursdays through October 10
WayForward has released a new trailer for River City Girls, an upcoming beat-’em-up. The trailer highlights the personality of Misako, one of the two playable characters in the game. You can watch the new trailer below.
In the trailer description, Misako is described by WayForward as “hot-blooded,” just like her best friend Kyoko. She’s also “tough, impulsive, and always ready for a fight.” Misako seems to have a bit of an angry streak to her as well, having no patience for her classmates who get in her way and aggressively punching her boyfriend Kunio after he steals the last piece of food that she and Kyoko were fighting over. In the trailer, we also get to see a bit more of River City Girls’ gameplay, which features traditional beat-’em-up mechanics like throwables, combos, and special attacks.
River City Girls is one of the better anime-like games we played at Anime Expo 2019. Developed by Shantae: Half-Genie Hero‘s WayForward and overseen by Dragon Ball FighterZ‘s Arc System Works, River City Girls is the newest entry in the River City franchise. The game begins with franchise main characters Kunio and Riki being kidnapped. Their girlfriends, Kyoko and Misako, embark on a rampage across the different districts of the city to find and save them.
To convey the same sense of style as the original River City games, River City Girls features 16-bit-style graphics, an ’80s-inspired synthpop soundtrack, and both solo and co-op play. River City Girls is scheduled to release for Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and PC on September 5. Limited Run Games is also creating a physical version.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses is out now on Nintendo Switch, but there’s still a lot of content on the way for the game. In addition to an upcoming free update, Nintendo will be releasing several waves of DLC as part of the title’s expansion pass, and the company has outlined when fans can expect that content to arrive.
The first “wave” of DLC launched alongside the game and added male and female Officers Academy outfits for protagonist Byleth. Wave 2 is scheduled to release by October 31, 2019 and will introduce new Auxiliary battle maps, as well as “helpful in-game support items” and some additional content. The third wave of DLC will follow by December 31 and will add new quests and costumes, while the fourth is slated to arrive by April 30, 2020 and will introduce new story content, including additional playable characters and locations.
All four waves of DLC will only be sold as part of Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ expansion pass, which runs for $25 USD / £22.49 / $37.50 AU. You can read more details about the expansion pass on Nintendo’s website. Everyone who purchases a copy of the game is also entitled to receive Byleth in the mobile Fire Emblem Heroes game. To qualify, you’ll need to purchase a copy and register it via My Nintendo by June 29, 2020. You can read how to redeem the free gift here.
In addition to the planned DLC, Nintendo will release several free updates for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, one of which will introduce a more challenging difficulty mode. Nintendo hasn’t specified when that update will go live, only noting that it will be released “later this year.” The company mentions a couple of other free updates for the game in its DLC roadmap, but it hasn’t yet detailed what those will entail.
The Pokemon Company is getting a pop-up store in the heart of London for a limited time, to pair with the UK-inspired Pokemon Sword and Shield. The store will be located in the Westfield London from October 18-November 15.
According to the company, the store will offer a range of Pokemon products, including some exclusives. The announcement states that it is meant to pay tribute to the UK’s role in inspiring the new Galar region featured in Sword and Shield, which will release on November 15.
