Hello, everyone. This is Arca. I was planning on completing a month-overdue post on my thoughts on that amazing PlayStation 5 reveal event that I watched live with millions of others on June 11th. Instead, I decided to talk about two more recent events. It'll also be shorter than usual. Here we go! Paper Mario Gameplay Shown in Treehouse Presentation Today, and Bakugan Announcement Causes Fan Toxicity Image Credit: Nintendo Nintendo hosted a Treehouse Live presentation, and beforehand explicitly stated that it would only be about the upcoming game (it releases in just a week, in fact) Paper Mario: The Origami King  and also a brand-new game from Shantae independent developers WayForward not-yet-announced at the time for a third party franchise. Then it aired at 1 PM Eastern time and the video dislikes started rolling in. The chat was also very toxic, but it seemed mostly to be from arrogant fans expecting it to be a Direct (Treehouse presentations have literally never been like Dir...

Image collage done by me, but individual screenshots from Amazon and PlayStation Blog . Image credit for game box to Sony, Marvel, and Insomniac.  Hello, everyone. This is Arca, and today I will be doing a news roundup of sorts. This post was originally, as I hinted at in yesterday's post (which you should totally read here ), going to focus on next-gen AAA games potentially all costing $70 rather than $60. Then, two pieces of breaking news occurred. First, yesterday at noon, the book sequel to Ernest Cline's 2011 movie-sparking phenomenon Ready Player One was given a confirmed title, cover, and release date. Then, just 3 hours ago as of the time I started typing up this post, Sony via the official PlayStation Blog showed off for the first time what PlayStation 5 games will have as their cover art design through Spider-Man: Miles Morales . Let's tackle all of those subjects, as well as my thoughts on them, in precisely that order, starting with... Ready Player Two book is ...

Image Credit: EA Motive via Engadget Hey, everyone. This is Arca, and today I will be discussing the announcement, as well as the gameplay reveal, for the new EA Star Wars game coming October 2 of this year, titled Star Wars: Squadrons . It will have both multiplayer modes, a singleplayer campaign, and VR-support on PS4's PSVR (which is great, especially for PSVR owners like me who'd like to be able to fulfill the dream of jumping into an X-Wing's pilot cockpit), as well as PC VR, and will launch on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It will be a starship combat game with crossplay multiplayer across all platforms, which is great. The game was leaked on the PlayStation store, as I talked about all the way back in March ( http://www.arcabaran.com/2020/03/star-wars-project-maverick-ea-leaked.html ), as "Project Maverick". I watched the initial reveal trailer premiere live on YouTube, and didn't see the gameplay reveal live but watched it a few hours after it premiered (al...

Image Credit: Activision, source , cropping done by Bandipedia Hello, everyone. This is Arca. This post is my reaction to the first new Crash Bandicoot game in over a decade that was announced via livestream a few weeks ago, titled "It's About Time". It will release on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 2, 2020 (the same exact day that a new Star Wars game, Squadrons , will be released). I'm assuming that, even though PC and Nintendo Switch releases haven't been confirmed yet, they'll likely be revealed eventually. This is since there's no reason not to put a multiplatform game on PC, and also since the past few Crash remasters were also released by Activision on the Switch with a bit of a delay (or none at all, in the case of the Switch version of Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled ). Despite the next-generation of consoles, the PlayStation 5 from Sony and the Xbox Series X from Microsoft, literally releasing a month or two after this game releases, b...

Photo Credit: Arca Baran for This and That, Here and There The president of Nintendo, Shuntaro Furukawa, apologized for the Joy-Con drift issue in a recent meeting with investors. This is what he had to say during a Q&A session, translated from Japanese by Kotaku ( https://kotaku.com/nintendo-president-apologizes-for-joy-con-trouble-1844216184 ) from this source:  https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2020/qa2006.pdf   "Regarding the Joy-Con, we apologize for any trouble caused to our customers... We are continuing to aim to improve our products, but as the Joy-Con is the subject of a class-action lawsuit in the United States and this is still a pending issue, we would like to refrain from responding about any specific actions." So basically, this starts out with basically what Nintendo would reply with when asked for comment about the issue by various publications last July when a major sudden public outrage occurred over the topic, which has been prevalent since near th...

Image Credit: Sony from the official PlayStation Blog US You are not looking at a concept art design. You are not looking at fanart. That is literally a Sony-made render of the final design for the controller that will ship with their new console, the PlayStation 5, when it hits store shelves this winter (but still could be delayed, and so could Microsoft's Xbox Series X). This is probably the most surprising and out-of-left-field controller reveal that I've ever gotten to experience, ever. The only things similar were when I found out about the Nintendo Switch reveal a few days late and it didn't look that different from a Wii U gamepad, or when I saw the Xbox Series X controller and console get revealed live during a YouTube livestream of the Game Awards 2019 (which was on the day of my 15th birthday), and while the console itself was very tall and PC-like, the controller wasn't particularly radically different in terms of aesthetics. But oh boy, we've go...

In today's gaming news roundup (a rare instance of me actually doing two news roundups two days in a row), I will take advantage of my later sleep schedule due to the sudden cancellation of all school and work in my school tomorrow for a staff day (that was one happy surprise of a voice mail, even if I'm not sure if they'll go ahead and add a day to the calendar) to write about more than just two separate topics. How many total, in fact? Three. The first part builds upon what we learned in a post I made two blogs ago ( http://www.arcabaran.com/2020/03/happy-mario-day-2020-lego-mario-announcement.html ) with some more interesting tidbits and a new trailer on Nintendo being Nintendo and subverting our expectations with the help of LEGO, the second part is about one fan's unexpectedly immature response to a very praised once PS4-exclusive being ported to PC, and the last part is a surprise featuring Tom Nook. Anyways, enough of the yip-yapping, and let's jump three tim...

For this gaming news roundup, just when you thought the coronavirus couldn't possible effect more, and be given lectures in school or work about what your closing schedule may be (I know I was), I found out some news that would have had me do a double-take had I been drinking water. Ready for it? E3 2020 has been cancelled due to the coronavirus. Wait a minute, that was obvious. Ready for the actually surprising part? Living meme, gaming icon, and former Nintendo of America CEO Reggie "My Body is Ready" Fils-Aime has now, in the middle of his retirement and time spent giving lectures on the business benefits of memes (among other things) at Cornell, become a part of the board of directors at the slowly-falling company that is GameStop. So no, he won't try to beg you to get a PowerUp Rewards membership in a small, anime-merch-filled building near you. First, for the less surprising (but more recent and relevant, as it was only confirmed this morning) news. E3 20...