Welcome to the weekend. Saturdays are all about catching up on sleep, taking care of the laundry, and of course doing some housekeeping. Of course I’m joking. I don’t know about you, but I don’t get any of these things done because I’m so busy with video games. I suppose you two are the same, so let’s catch up with you all. Today, we heard that pixel artists have recreated the Kanto region from Pokemon Red & Blue, Sifu is about to get a big update with some changes to the difficulty, and Embracer is working on a whole new deal with Marvel. This is just our top news, so read on for the rest.
Sifu to get new features and outfits immediately after redeeming the raid
When the game was released earlier this year, players were a little surprised by some of the bosses, which prompted the developer behind Sifu, Sloclap, to promise a major update. It’s finally time and Sloclap is adding a bunch of changes as well as some interesting difficulty tweaks. “Players who may want to flaunt their kung fu mastery can finally display a new score that better reflects their fighting prowess,” the company notes. “The new scoring system will take into account every punch, kick, sweep and finish made, and distribute a ranking based on player softness, efficiency, and versatility. Destroy a group of enemies without getting hit and players will be greeted with a score worth bragging about.”
Valve wants to build “more open and capable” versions of the steam surface
Value appears to be interested in creating “more open and capable” versions of Steam Deck. And here I was thinking he was really very open and capable. This news comes from a brochure that Valve apparently distributes throughout Asia. The brochure reads “This is a multi-generation production line”. “Valve will support Steam Deck and SteamOS well for the foreseeable future. We will learn from the Steam community about new uses for our hardware that we haven’t thought of yet and build new versions to be more open and capable than the first Steam Deck was.” Something to keep your eyes on.
Embracer is working on a new deal with Marvel according to Insider
Embracer has been on a buying spree lately, acquiring dozens of different companies large and small. The latest development is that Embracer is now looking at concluding a deal with Marvel to produce some video games. According to industry observer Miller, “Embracer appears to be in the middle of working on a deal with Marvel that extends well beyond Avengers (which is understandable with recent news indicating that both EA and Ubisoft have Marvel content in the pipeline). I suspect Avengers They will live and that will be announced when the Embracer/Marvel deal closes. Brass Nails: The acquisition of Crystal Dynamics has officially taken place and I hear work on Avengers continues relatively unabated. Things can change, but that’s where we stand.”
Activision Blizzard’s presence on mobile and PC was the driving force of the Xbox deal
The merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard may have involved some big intellectual property, but the real prize was apparently the mobile market share. According to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, “When we were thinking about what we can do today and where we need to go, the biggest gaming platform on the planet is mobile phones. One and a half billion people play on mobile phones. And I unfortunately think, like Microsoft , that it’s not a place where we have a native platform. Since games, coming from console and PC, we don’t have a lot of creative capabilities that have built successful mobile games.”
Hundreds of pixel artists recreate the Kanto region from Pokemon Red and Blue
Pixel artists have recreated the entire Kanto region from Pokemon Red & Blue, delighting fans of the franchise in the process. The result of this gigantic project, Kanto Redrawn, was a fully interactive map that players could explore at their leisure. “Kanto Redrawn is a collaborative art project by a group of passionate pixel artists from around the world,” explained the group known as Retro Redrawn. “The goal was to visually represent the Kanto region in a way that the original developers couldn’t achieve with the technical limitations of the original hardware.” Their impressive work certainly speaks for itself.
