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Steam platform concurrent users have breached 26m for the first time today

Post 1st lockdown growth in Q1 2020, new records for PCCUs have been set in Jan and Feb 2021

Note: in-game CCUs have not matched the record set in March 2020 pic.twitter.com/xVhlwy780Y

— Piers Harding-Rolls (@PiersHR) February 7, 2021

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.

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 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, 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.

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.

For more on Godzilla vs. Kong, which will be released in theaters and on HBO Max on March 31, 2021, take a look at who we think could be the real villain in this movie. Or catch up on every major monster in the Godzilla vs. Kong MonsterVerse.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.