It’s been nearly 30 years since Capcom popularized tag-based fighting games with X-Men vs. Street Fighter — and to a lesser extent, SNK with Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle. But now, the subgenre appears to be thriving in the vacuum left by Capcom itself, which hasn’t delivered a new tag-based...
How Magic: The Gathering’s space opera found its voice
After spending 40 minutes on Tarkir: Dragonstorm, the panel of Wizards of the Coast designers at last month’s MagicCon in Chicago still had a few announcements up their sleeves. The preview event had already shown off a handful of new cards and a glimpse of a familiar dragon-centric story, but...
Seven years later, Nintendo fans beat Switch game even the devs didn’t
For every massive success Nintendo releases, there’s an oddball that confuses everyone. In 2017, that was the two-player party game 1-2 Switch, a collection of accessible mini-games. Think Wii Sports, but without the cutesy Miis, or Mario Party without the brand recognition. Players would be prompted to do anything from...
The apocryphal story of America’s ‘Pikachu with big breasts’
Three decades after its debut in Japan, the Pokémon franchise is firmly entrenched as a cultural juggernaut. Across trading cards, video games, anime, movies, toys, and other merchandise, Pokémon is now a multibillion-dollar business.But in the early ’90s, Pokémon was an unknown quantity. Its creators were unsure that the franchise...
Hideo Kojima’s wild idea for a future game reminded me of an ’80s hidden gem
Time is a concept that is very hard to master in video games, and few creators have been fascinated by it as much as Hideo Kojima. The legendary designer behind the Metal Gear Solid series and Death Stranding, whose second installment, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, showed off some...
D&D’s next big game won’t play anything like BG3 — and with the director of Jedi: Survivor, that’s the point
Stig Asmussen can finally breathe. The next game from the director of Star: Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor, one he and the team at his recently formed studio Giant Skull have worked on for more than a year, has been revealed as a giant AAA Dungeons & Dragons adventure....
How a Criminal Minds star pivoted to a passion-project audio play about aliens
Some stories are small and humble, easily contained in a family home or familiar neighborhood. Others are vast, stretching out to space itself. The Signal, an eight-part audio drama from Audible and Fresh Produce Media that debuted on Amazon in December, is somewhere in between. Audio plays are making a...
Webcomic phenom Let’s Play is getting an anime — a dream come true for American creator Mongie
Let’s Play creator Leeanne M. Krecic has always followed her heart, whether as an anime enthusiast, a tuba player, a PC gamer, a computer scientist, or a webcomic creator under her alter ego, “Mongie.” And her committed pursuit to finding life’s most joyful path has also resulted in tremendous success.Not...
How to translate a game with no words
Chants of Sennaar, the 2023 language puzzle game from Rundisc, uses fictional languages but was developed in French and English. “Our choices of vocabulary, riddles, and puzzles were made from the outset to suit both languages,” creative director Julien Moya told Polygon, referencing how players who speak these languages might...
Resident Alien is finally leaning into science fiction, with time travel, cyborgs, and alien abductions
USA/Syfy’s Resident Alien started as a quirky mashup of Northern Exposure and Invader Zim, a fish-out-of-water comedy where Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk of Firefly, Rogue One, and Andor), the new doctor in the small town of Patience, Colorado, is actually an alien who wants to take over Earth. Harry’s secret...