“So, just be aware, the characters do tend to wander a bit.”
IN THE NEWS
A good year keeps getting better for Nintendo. Following the massive success of both the Nintendo Switch and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, another Switch release is performing very well. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, released April 28, sold 459,000 copies on launch day. Those sales are “enough to make it the fastest-selling release in the racing franchise’s history,” Venture Beat’s Jeff Grubb reports.
Oh, and someone slapped a Switch on a VR headset and played Breath of the Wild … the results were mixed.
It’s the little things that count. Like spending a decade trying to get into a room in a video game because, why not? Termacious Trickocity successfully entered “The Cage” in Halo 3 after their first attempt (of many) starting in 2008. Patricia Hernandez at Kotaku reports just how comically elaborate the whole thing was:
“They had to game checkpoints, kill enemies in a certain order, position three players in different areas of the level, trigger dialogue in a particular way, delay enemy spawns just so, use the hammer, melee a vehicle away, clear an area of most boxes, stack a bunch of objects on top of each other, activate cutscenes at the right time, launch themselves with a hammer to clip inside of a mountain, melee the Pelican over to the cage, and then kill themselves.”
All of this, and 10 years of trying, to respawn in a small room that is normally inaccessible.
Monster Strike is done in the U.S. The wildly popular Japanese mobile game had difficulty capturing audiences outside Japan, and has decided to take the English version down entirely Aug. 1, 2017. “Xflag said players won’t be able to transfer their game accounts to other versions of Monster Strike,” Polygon’s Michael McWhertor reports, “nor will the company offer refunds on in-game purchases.”
Do you like StarCraft? According to Blizzard, it’s the remnants of whatever crap stuck to the wall. Blizzard posted a new StarCraft blog post Monday detailing the making of the game. “We knew that our Terrans were going to be rough and dirty. We knew we wanted the Protoss to be—not savage, exactly, but primal, and powerful. And we knew we wanted the Zerg to swarm,” Blizzard art director Samwise Didier said, according to PCGamer’s Tom Sykes.
Don’t call in bomb threats. Seriously, don’t. In Twitch streamer Paul “Ice_Poseidon” Denino’s case, he was escorted off a plane and banned from Twitch because a viewer called in a “bomb threat under his name” as a prank. Nicole Carpenter at Dot Esports explains Denino “reportedly spilled his flight information while livestreaming from the airport before boarding. When the flight landed, Denino was pulled off the plane by police.”
LEAGUE LAND
You have until May 5 to grab the latest round of champions and skins on sale. Champions include Vel’Koz, Xerath, Udyr and Azir. Skins include Tundra Hunter Warwick, Runeborn Xerath, Headhunter Nidalee and Pool Party Graves.
Malzahar and his annoying voidlings and Heimerdinger and his stupid turrets are both getting updates. Dot Esports’ Aaron Mickunas has more on Riot fiddling to make Malzahar viable again in Mid Lane, and Heimerdinger a little less boring.
Christian “The Rain Man” Kahmann has been banned from League of Legends for intentional feeding, or “inting.”