New Guilty Gear Strive High-Level Gameplay For Ky, Sol, Axl

Guilty Gear Strive is the next core entry in Arc System Works’ groundbreaking fighting game series, and it continues with the franchise’s fusion of slick anime-style visuals and heavy-metal infused action. Ahead of the fighting game’s upcoming beta starting later this month on February 17, GameSpot has exclusive new gameplay showing off some high-level matches with Sol Badguy, Ky Kiske, and Axl Low. In these fights, we also get a first look at each character’s particular super move, which leans heavily into their fighting style and personality.

The first match features Axl Low battling the shadow manipulating hunter, Zato-1. In this match, Axl utilizes his chained blades to keep his foe at a distance, and when Zato-1 is vulnerable, Axl unleashes his One Vision special attack (Input — 214214 + HS). It’s a move that temporarily freezes the opponent in time, allowing you to lay into them with the attack. This special move is also cancellable, allowing you to disengage the skill and surprise your enemies with other attacks right after.

In the next match, we see Ky Kiske face off against one of Strive’s newest fighters named Nagoriyuki. While Ky Kiske has been one of the heroic characters from the series, he’s got a bit of a darker edge in Guilty Gear Strive. His new special move in this game is the Dragon Install (Input — 214214 + HS, when at low health). Similar to Sol Badguy’s ability, Dragon Install will amplify Ky Kiske’s attacks. Upon activation, it will cause a shockwave that can hit your foe.

Lastly, we have the series’ antihero, Sol Badguy, facing off against Zato-1. Like in previous games, Sol is a powerhouse who can move with great speed. He’s able to close the distance fast and lay in some heavy damage, and that’s what his newest super move in Guilty Gear Strive is all about. When you activate Sol’s Heavy Mob Cemetery (Input — 214214 + HS), the fighter will transform into a human dragon hybrid form that can deal massive damage to enemies. This move is great for closing the hitting enemies who like to focus on keep-away tactics, and given its speed upon activation, it can surprise enemies fast.

With the beta kicking off this month, we’ve got much more to see from Arc System Works’ latest fighting game. More on Guilty Gear Strive, be sure to stick with GameSpot as more details come in.

Razer Valentine’s Day Deals Discount Some Of Its Best (And Cutest) PC Gaming Accessories

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and if you’re looking for gift ideas for a loved one, then Razer has some excellent deals that fit the Valentine’s theme quite well. The company is discounting its pink Quartz PC gaming accessories, which are among the company’s best products–they’re just pretty in pink. Razer’s Valentine’s Day sale runs through February 20 at Best Buy, so you have plenty of time to snag the perfect PC gaming gift, even if you’re a little late for the special day itself.

All of the discounted products in the V-Day promotion feature Razer’s RGB Chroma lighting, which can be customized and synced across devices. While the below products are all pink, Chroma features more than 16 million colours.

$119 (was $140)

The Razer Blackwidow V3 gaming keyboard features Razer’s classic tactile Green key switches in a full-size form factor, complete with a number pad, scroll wheel, and media keys. It also comes with a 6.5 feet USB cable and a magnetic wrist rest.

$127.49 (was $150)

The Razer Viper is one of the company’s best, most versatile mouse shapes, thanks to its ambidextrous and lightweight design. The Razer Viper Ultimate can be used both wired or wirelessly and comes with a charging dock, on which the Viper can rest and charge when you’re not using it.

$127.49 (was $150)

Razer’s Kraken Kitty gaming headset is the company’s most unique pair of cans, featuring RGB cat ears that are great for streamers. The Kitty’s cat ears can react to your Twitch or YouTube chat as your audience sends emotes, triggers alerts, and more.

$80

If you’re not into cats or having cat ears, the Razer Kraken gaming headset features the same great sound without the RGB ears or lighting. During Razer’s Valentine’s Day sale, the Razer Kraken also comes with a Base Station V1, which you can rest your headset on when your gaming session is over.

$51 (was $60)

If you want to go the extra mile with your RGB lighting, then getting a Chroma-equipped mouse pad is the way to go. Razer’s Goliathus can be synced with your Razer mouse, keyboard, and more.

$68 (was $80)

The Razer Base Station V2 features Chroma RGB lighting as well as two USB 3.1 ports that you can plug your headset, mouse, keyboard, or any other device into.

Steam Concurrent Player Count Breaks Record Again, Tops 26 Million

It has been about a year since the start of the global pandemic, and a lot of people are staying at home playing video games. We’ve seen Steam’s concurrent player count break its own record several times during this stretch, and the record has been broken once again.

Industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls shared the news on Twitter, showing that more than 26 million Steam users were logged in at the same time, representing an all-time peak for the service. The number was actually a little bit higher than what is listed in his tweet when we checked it out, so it looks like Steam’s record could grow even larger.

One variable, however, is how many people are actually actively playing a game at that time. This record was not broken today, though it inched closer than any time we’ve seen in nearly a year.

It’s tough to say for sure just why the player record was broken today, as it has been a pretty dry period for new game releases. Staples like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, Grand Theft Auto V, and Team Fortress 2 continue to sit high on the charts, with over 1 million people playing CS: GO at the same time, in particular.

The last big spike we saw in December made more sense on paper, as Cyberpunk 2077 had just released. It still charts in February, but the total player count has fallen considerably as CD Projekt Red continues to work on improving stability and addressing bugs.

Street Fighter 2 Turns 30, And Some Never Stopped Playing

Street Fighter 2, one of the most important fighting games–and video games–of all time, is now 30 years old. As of February 6, it has been three decades since Ryu and company landed in arcades, and the fighter’s classic gameplay has spawned countless imitators.

In a post on its Twitter page, Capcom celebrated the game’s 30th birthday with a short gameplay clip. Street Fighter 2 was far more successful than its predecessor, which was a fairly limited game that only featured two playable characters: Ryu and Ken. Both played basically the same.

Following the initial success of Street Fighter 2, Capcom ported the game to several different systems and released follow-ups that added new features and characters. These included Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II, and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. On Switch, Ultra Street Fighter II also gives players the choice of a new or classic art style, working the classic mechanics into a game that looks like it could have released today.

Of course, the Street Fighter series continued well after the second game’s many versions. Street Fighter 3, Street Fighter 4, Street Fighter 5, and Street Fighter Alpha have all been successful in their own right, but Street Fighter 2 will likely always stand as the series’ biggest game. It even got its own Arcade1Up home arcade cabinet, and an updated version announced last month will feature artwork like the original cabinet. Alongside several versions of the game, it includes classic Capcom arcade games such as Darkstalkers and Strider.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

Remembering 2001: The Biggest Games That Turn 20 This Year

SSX Tricky | November 5

SSX Tricky | November 5

Being a sweet, sweet boy who grew up in the Midwest, winter sports were a big thing for me. If you think this sounds just like the intro to my 1080 snowboarding write up that I got asked to do a while ago, you are exactly right, and that’s where I am going with this. Also, thank you for remembering, that means so much! Don’t remember? Go check it out! Anyway, me, winter sports, snowboarding, cool things that go together. Because of this, I am always drawn to games about winter sports and WHOA BABY did SSX catch my eye… well not SSX, but SSX Tricky. At the time, I couldn’t look away from the wild, wonderful characters and was immediately drawn in by the amazing over-the-top take on snowboarding. I was done after seeing my first uber trick. “THEY TAKE THEIR FEET OFF THE BOARD!! HOW DOES THAT WORK!?” is probably what I would have been asking myself if I wasn’t already too busy picking my jaw up off the floor. SSX Tricky was perfect. I loved it.

This is another one I played at my best friend’s house before I managed to get my own copy of it. We played a lot together, but looking back, I managed to play so much solo on his copy that I fully leveled up a character (my boy Mac, BAYBEE!) by myself. Like I would go over to his house to continue playing without him. Gosh, I’m having a moment where I am worried that I may have been a bad friend here. Joel, if you are out there, I am sorry, and I miss you, but I really did play a LOT of your copy of SSX Tricky. I am eternally grateful for you showing me my favorite extreme sports game of all time, also for giving me that copy of SoulCalibur 2 for my birthday. Miss you buddy. It’s OK though, it led me to get my own copy that I still have literally sitting on my shelf behind me as I write this. I played so much of SSX Tricky once I had that copy. Same for SSX3. Hell, I even played a bunch of the reboot that wasn’t the best, but you know how your boy needs his winter sports games fix.

Heartfelt notes to my old friend Joel aside, SSX Tricky and SSX3 fit easily into this small grouping of games that I always look to for comfort. If I am having a rough time or want to get that warm, cozy, safe at home feeling, you can probably catch me tearing it up in the Tokyo Megaplex or Pipedream. I could spend hours just zoning out shredding it up in SSX Tricky. And you know what? I really miss it. Sure, I could pull out the GameCube and go, but it has been far too long since we have seen anything in the SSX series. While it helps that both the most recent SSX reboot and SSX3 are backwards compatible on the Xbox Series X, I know it’s not just me who would love to see an SSX Tricky remaster or even a new entry! If you feel the series still has the skills to pay the bills be sure to grab your French toast and syrup and call your mama in the room and show her how great these games were! But mostly just bring them back!? Please? — Ben Janca, Video Producer

Super Mario World: Hear The SNES Classic’s Restored Soundtrack

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.

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@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.

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For more on Super Mario World and the SNES, check out someone’s work on adding realtime ray tracing to SNES games and where we ranked Super Mario World on our list of the Top 100 Video Games of All Time. Spoilers: It’s high.

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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.

Mass Effect: Andromeda’s New Aliens Were Cut Due to Budget, Scope, and Cosplay

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.”

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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.”

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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.

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“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.

While one can hope some of these designs will make their way into the next Mass Effect project, fans of the series can look forward to interacting with the original set of aliens in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition this May.

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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.

Playing With Power: The Nintendo Story to Premiere on Crackle in March 2021

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.

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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.”

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2021 appears to be continuing the trend of video game documentaries, and follows 2020’s example that had such hits as Netflix’s High Score and CBS All Access’ Console Wars.

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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.