Category: IGN

Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Super Smash Bros., has revealed the reason why the series’ food various items each heal your character by a specific amount.

Writing this week on Twitter/X, Sakurai simply dropped the detail out of nowhere — 25 years on from when food was first introduced to Nintendo’s hit fighting series, back in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

In short, the more calories a piece of food is likely to have, the more it has been programmed to heal. So, while a bunch of healthy grapes might heal your character by 4% in Smash Bros. Ultimate, a pizza or stack of pancakes will heal by 7%.

While some had guessed the logic previously, this is fans’ first official confirmation why Smash Bros.’ foodstuffs act this way. And, peering at the Smash Bros. Wiki page on food, the theory generally stands up to reality.

Super Smash Bros. Melee introduced 28 food types, a total that increased to 36 in Smash Bros. Ultimate — though the actual range has varied over the course of the franchise.

Looking just at Ultimate, then, low healing items include cherries (1% damage healed), kiwis, lemons and tea (all 2%), a lollipop (3%) and cola (3% — guess it’s diet).

Mid-tier healing items include squash soup (4%), cheese, chocolate and dumplings (all 5%), plus a hot dog, corn dog, cherry pie and popcorn (all 6%). Curiously, a salad heals by 5% — though its image shows it is covered in some kind of dressing.

Undo your top button and we’re onto the top-tier foodstuffs by damage healed, such as the hamburger, pancakes and pizza (all 7%), spaghetti (8%), strawberry shortcake (10%), steak (11%) and turkey (12%). Curiously, bread is also in this category (at 10%) — though it is the whole loaf.

So, next time you’re playing Super Smash Bros. and food items spawn on-screen, head for the tastiest-looking, highest calorie option. Wombo combo? Popcorn combo, more like.

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Games Workshop has confirmed that a recently released Warhammer 40,000 army set a sales record for the company, reinforcing this Space Marine chapter as among the most popular in the setting.

Delivering Games Workshop’s latest financial results, CEO Kevin Rountree confirmed that the Space Wolves secured a new record for army set sales at the company. This relates to the Space Wolves army set that launched in May last year, and which you can see in the image below. It contains 28 brand-new miniatures, a Codex Supplement for the Great Companies of Fenris, a set of datasheet cards, and a new transfer sheet. In terms of minis, the army set includes a Wolf Guard Battle Leader, a Wolf Priest, three Wolf Guard Headtakers, 10 Blood Claws, and 10 Grey Hunters.

It’s official: “several” new Ecco the Dolphin games are in development.

Last summer, the creator of Ecco the Dolphin pleased many fans by announcing that not only were remakes of the original games underway, but a “third” instalment was also in development. Ed Annunziata — the original creator of the famed and fiendishly difficult action-adventure games — was interviewed about raising awareness of ocean conservation, his life as a developer, and, right at the end, he dropped his bombshell revelation.

California-based developer A&R Atelier, at which Annunziata works, revealed in a press release that it is remastering Ecco the Dolphin and Ecco: The Tides of Time, as well as that all-important third game.

“It has been years in the making, and we’re honored to bring Ecco back,” Annunziata said (thanks, Gematsu). “Ecco has always been more than a game about a dolphin — he’s a bridge between worlds.” Sadly, that’s essentially where the details stop, but the developer said to keep an eye on both its website and the official Discord for more information.

Ecco the Dolphin originally launched in 1992 on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, and was followed by a sequel, Ecco: The Tides of Time, in 1994. Ecco Jr. and Ecco Jr. and the Great Ocean Treasure Hunt were released in 1995, although they were “edutainment” games and primarily developed as learning tools.

You play as the titular dolphin, your underwater world now devastated by a swirling gust of air and water. You must help him navigate back through treacherous tropical reefs and freezing polar ice floes to reunite him with his dolphin pod. There have been a few remasters since: we thought the 2000 remake was okay, writing: “Ecco the Dolphin is a classic from SEGA, but sometimes classics should stay in the past,” and of the 2007 remake, we wrote: “For those who have played Ecco before, there’s really no reason to come back to it.”

The last Ecco the Dolphin game — ostensibly the “third” game, although Annunziata wasn’t involved — fared much better, however, getting a 7.6 in IGN’s Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future review. A further sequel, Ecco 2: Sentinels of the Universe, which had been written as a direct sequel to Defender of the Future, was cancelled.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Cast your mind back to the end of last year, and you may remember we reported that a group of volunteer modders had united to develop an online mode for Rockstar’s Bully (also known as Canis Canem Edit in some parts of the world). Fast-forward just a few short months later, however, and now the Bully online project is “shutting down forever.”

Bully was a humorous action game that put players in the role of high school outcast Jimmy while attending a pretentious private school. Fans have long called for a sequel, which was once in development at Rockstar’s New England studio in the late 2000s, and while Bully 2 was obviously never released, some of its ideas made it into other Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption 2.

Though the game was developed to be a single-player experience, the mod, which has been in development for years and fully released only last month, allowed players to team up for minigames, roleplay, compete in racing, and face off against NPCs, instantly drawing the attention of fans… and IP owner Rockstar, it seems.

“Coming with sad news today,” wrote one of the Fat Pigeon Development team on the project’s Discord. “The Bully Online project is shutting down forever, which unfortunately means all the following is going to happen in 24 hours.”

The post reported that the Bully Online server would shut down, development of Bully Online scripts would stop, the source code would disappear, and all webpages referencing it would be removed, along with the launcher (which has seemingly already happened). All Bully Online account data will also be “permanently deleted” and even Discord channels related to the mod are getting nuked.

The team held off on detailing why this was happening, only confirming that lead dev SWEGTA hopes to upload an explanatory video to his YouTube channel. “For now, though, know this was not something we wanted,” the statement added.

Rockstar parent company Take-Two has a history of clamping down on fan projects, although after it acquired the modding team behind the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto 5 roleplay servers FiveM and RedM back in 2023, it was felt a change in approach might have been in place. In fact, just yesterday (January 14), we reported that Rockstar had even launched an official marketplace where creators can sell mods… which could be the issue, as some players suggest.

“I think we all know the reason, it’s got everything to do with Rockstar’s new CFX launch mod site where they make more greedy profit for [publisher] Take-Two Interactive by putting pay-walls on mods,” posited one unhappy player. “I expect more mods to be shut down as the months go on with this new CFX marketplace.”

That said, as this commenter points out, Bully Online was already effectively paywalled to donors of the project, which is widely frowned upon across the modding space. “Not surprising at all,” they said. “Dude was pretty much asking to get shutdown the moment he paywalled early access to this.”

As for if there’ll ever be an official Bully 2? Dan Houser, Rockstar Games co-founder and the writer behind the studio’s biggest games, including the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, recently sat down for an exclusive interview with IGN, revealing Bully 2 didn’t happen because of “bandwidth issues.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Terraria 1.4.5 will release on January 27.

In an excitable post, Re-Logic’s Loki confirmed that while the team “did have to resubmit a few things, which pushed us back a bit further than expected,” the release date is now locked in and will include “things that got left out of 1.4.4” plus crossover events with Dead Cells and a second collab with Pocketpair’s Palworld, this time for Terraria players.

While we’re on the topic of “cross,” no, unfortunately crossplay will not be a part of this update. The team does hope it’ll be “made available some time after 1.4.5,” but didn’t hint at a timescale for that.

“The ReLogic team has ALWAYS went above and beyond for the Terraria community,” writes one happy player. “For well over a decade, you guys have given us update after update for free. You guys even created a comic book AND a board game for us. On top of that, you’ve held tons of contests for us and have always kept us well-informed and up to date on everything relating to Terraria. What’s crazy is that’s not even close to all the amazing things that you guys do for us. That’s why the Terraria community is the greatest gaming community on Earth.”

To get an idea of just how long ago Terraria released, IGN reviewed it in 2011. Even then, though, we thought it was amazing, scoring it 9/10 and writing: “Though on the surface it looks like just another “me too” indie game seeking to ride the coattails of Minecraft’s success, Terraria expands on the familiar sandbox gameplay with a greater emphasis on combat and adventure that proves very satisfying. That’s rare indeed.”

Here’s the full update. Brace yourself — there’s a lot to read!

Terraria Update 1.4.5 — January 27, 2026

New items

• Items from Dead Cells, including:
  • A vanity outfit of the Beheaded, the protagonist of Dead Cells.
  • Hanging flasks that can display items in a similar way to Item Frames.
  • Weapons for all damage types, including:
  • The Flint, a melee weapon.
  • The Killing Deck.
  • The Mushroom Staff, which summons a Mushroom Boi minion and is crafted with some combination of Glowing Mushrooms. The minion’s eyes are visible in the dark.
  • A Barnacle sentry.
  • The Swarm.
  • The Ram Rune.
  • The Wings of the Crow.
  • A Health Fountain furniture item that gives the player a buff when interacted with.
• A summonable Digtoise from Palworld that can mine through blocks. It is unknown whether or not it is a pet.
• Several whips, including:
  • A whip dropped by the Moon Lord.
  • A Stardust-themed whip.
  • A Corruption-themed whip called the Soulscourge.
  • A Crimson-themed whip called the Vasculash.
  • A Duke Fishron-themed whip.
  • A Meteorite-themed whip called the Starcrash.
  • A Plantera-themed whip that releases homing petal projectiles after hitting an enemy.
  • A white whip.
  • An early-game whip called the Slime Whip. It is crafted from Gel and inflicts the Slime debuff.
• An early-game spear called the Slime Spear. It is crafted from Gel and inflicts the Slime debuff.
• Several furniture sets, including:
  • A Hallow-themed set inspired by the look of Hallowed armor.
  • An Aetherium-themed set.
  • A Fallen Star-themed set.
  • A Feywood-themed set inspired by Fairies and the Fallen Logs they can spawn at
  • A Corruption-themed set.
  • A Crimson-themed set.
  • A Gothic-themed set.
  • A Stone-themed set.
  • A modern-looking set.
  • A Moon-themed set.
  • A Snow-themed set.
  • A Flinx-themed set.
  • A complete Pine set.
• Fallen Star Bricks and Walls.
• Music Blocks that play notes.
• Several Boulder-related items or features, including:
  • A type of Boulder that “falls” upwards.
  • Boulder Rain, where Boulders fall from the sky during a Thunderstorm.
  • A Rainbow Boulder (initially teased as “🌈🪨”) found in secret seeds combined with Celebrationmk10. When activated it will bounce between ores and chests while passing through blocks and not hurting the player.
  • A Poo Boulder.
• A Shimmer Water Gun that allows the player to transform an NPC into their Shimmered form without submerging them in Shimmer.
• A potion or food item whose crafting recipe involves Bottled Water.
• Several transformation mounts (similar to the Wolf mount summoned by Lilith’s Necklace), including:
  • A transformation mount that resembles a velociraptor. The mount can be dyed and displays vanity items equipped in the head slot.When the player is flying, the velociraptor is carried by a pterodactyl. The mount-summoning item is crafted with some combination of Sturdy Fossils.
  • A transformation mount that resembles a bat
  • A transformation mount that resembles a Rat.
  • A transformation mount that resembles a Fairy.
• A roller skate mount which allows the player to scoot on surfaces and grind on Minecart Tracks.
• Paintings made by several members of the Terraria community, including:
• GreyL1me
• KirbyTG
• Artyrian (previously Timburr471)
• Orange Dude
• Shadouette
• Lady Forestia
• JzBoy
• BionicBandit
• Runic Pixels
• Waasephi
• A painting of the r/place 2023 art created by the Terraria community.
• An axe fairy pet harvesting wood from a tree.
• An Axe Fairy pet that looks like Cenx’s avatar and can harvest wood from trees.
• A pufferfish pet.
• A frog-themed accessory.
• An accessory resembling a Tamagotchi on a chain.
• A Silly Balloon-themed accessory.
• An item resembling a blue ribbon with a heart on it.
• A Stress Ball accessory that makes the player automatically attack when not moving and their inventory is closed. It has some type of interaction with the Extractinator.
• A Magic String accessory that causes yoyos to fly off the string and deal damage. It can be combined with the Yoyo Bag to make the Magic Yoyo Bag.
• Several vanity accessories that change the sound the player makes when hurt. These include:
  • The “Goat’s Tuft” which makes the player sound like a goat and can be found in Gold Chests. Its tooltip is ‘Quite the gruff tuft’.
  • An accessory that makes the player sound like a Zombie.
  • An accessory that makes the player sound like a turkey.
  • An accessory that makes the player sound like a chicken.
  • An accessory that makes the player sound like an arcade machine.
• A chest piece to complete the set of the Moon Lord Mask and Moon Lord Legs.
• An item whose sprite resembles the Cobweb’s with added sparkles.
• Cloud platforms.
• A variant of the Living Wood Wall that allows placing an unsafe wall (similar to the Forbidden Lihzahrd Brick Wall, Cursed Dungeon Brick Walls, etc.).
• An “Axearang” (a combination of axe and boomerang) that is capable of chopping down trees when thrown.
• A pink crafted banner.
• Throwable mud balls that place a Mud Block when they land. These deal 8 classless damage, inflict “Average” knockback (4–6), and have a “Very fast” use time (9–20).
• Placeable versions of background objects, including:
  • Demon Altar. It only drops “in the most extreme of circumstances and is not going to be easily obtained/readily available”.
  • Fallen Log.
  • Life Fruit.
  • Shadow Orb.
• An item that resembles a clay furnace.
• A placeable CRT Television that applies a visual filter when turned on like Monoliths.
• A developer set for Chicken Bones.
• An item called the “Mitey-Titey” that can place stalactite and stalagmite ambient objects in a similar way to the Rubblemaker.
• Hoppers that can pick up dropped items and store them in Chests.
• A stick-like item that kites can be attached to and flown from.
• A Freeze Bomb which turns water in its blast radius into Ice Blocks.
• A Bomb that can destroy Hardmode ore.
• Beach wear vanity sets.
• The Heroicis vanity set.
• Upgraded versions of Mining armor and Angler armor.
• Another headpiece option for Chlorophyte armor.
• Jungle Juice, a recovery potion which restores 180 health upon use. A stack of 3 Jungle Juices is crafted from 3 Greater Healing Potions and 1 Life Fruit.
• Infused Fertilizer, an upgraded version of Fertilizer which can be used to grow tall trees. Its tooltip is ‘It’s got what plants crave!’
• An “Acorn Slingshot” that shoots Acorns. When the acorn projectile lands on soil it turns into a tree sapling, in a similar way to how the Sandgun places sand.
• Rock Candy, a food item that can be crafted from Gem Bunnies or Gem Squirrels.
• A pylon.
• An RC Car that can be remote-controlled by the player, similar to the Kwad Racer Drone. It can move on both blocks and background walls.

Other new content

• Entities, including:
  • Several slime variants that carry items. The item inside the slime’s body changes its behavior. They are also more common in the new skyblock seed. These slime variants include:
  • “Cloud Slime”, a slime variant that jumps extra high and carries a Cloud Block.
  • “Dirt Slime”, a slime variant that carries a Dirt Block.
  • “Granite Slime”, a slime variant that spawns underground and carries a Granite Block.
  • “Slush Slime”, a spiked slime variant that glows in the dark, spawns in the Ice biome, and carries a Slush Block.
  • A slime carrying Moonglow that emits light and plants herbs.
  • A slime carrying a Dart Trap that can shoot darts at the player.
  • A pufferfish enemy/critter.
  • The Orca returning from the Old-gen console version Old-gen console version and Nintendo Nintendo 3DS version version, with updated sprites.
• A Seeds Menu that allows players to mix different secret world seeds together. Some seed combinations will trigger additional changes. Some examples include:
  • The player becoming a vampire, spawning underground, and burning under sunlight. The player can prevent burning under sunlight by holding an Umbrella or wearing a hat.
  • The water in the Ocean being replaced with Shimmer.
  • Flooding whenever there is heavy rain.
  • A functional use for Stink Potions.
• Slimes change their color when standing over painted blocks.
• A “skyblock” secret world seed, where the player spawns on a customized Floating Island in an empty world with very limited resources available to them.
• Meteor showers that cause Meteorite to fall from the sky. This may or may not be exclusive to the new skyblock seed.
• Players with bad luck will be pooped on by Birds and attacked by Squirrels.
• At least one hairstyle.A minion count underneath the buff icon that displays how many minions the player has summoned.
• An ambience effect of small cosmetic insects flying through wild grass plants.
• An effect that converts placed Torches to their biome variant.
• New boss music for the Eater of Worlds.
• New boss music for The Twins.
• At least 10 music tracks, including new themes for The Twins, the Eater of Worlds, the Torch God, King Slime, Skeletron, and Skeletron Prime.
• Achievements.
• A status message in multiplayer that tells how much damage each player did during a boss fight and how long the fight lasted.
• Content for the thunderstorm weather event. This includes lightning that strikes enemies and the tops of trees.
• A shader inspired by the “film noir” style.
• The ability to place critters as a small furniture item with the ⚷ Open / Activate button. The placed critter will stay near the furniture item.
• When reforging the best weapon modifiers like Legendary cannot be accidentally skipped. This is accompanied by a rainbow text effect and rainbow particles.
• More biome backgrounds.
• Modifiers for summon weapons, such as Eager, Focused, Loyal, Worthy, Rabid, Ballistic, and Fabled.
• Two Dungeon entrance variations that have a chance to replace the original Dungeon entrance during world generation.

Miscellaneous changes

• Localization for Japanese, Korean, and potentially Traditional Chinese.
• Possible improvements to localizations.
• Pumps in item form no longer burn in lava.
• Updated sprites for:
  • Multiple banners.
  • Multiple trophies.
  • Weapon Rack.
  • Demon Altar.
  • Slime Staff along with the Baby Slime it summons and buff icon.
  • Crimson Heart light pet.
  • Shadow Orb light pet along with its buff icon.
  • Shadow Orb background object.
  • Imp Staff along with the Imp it summons and buff icon.
  • Moon Lord.
  • Bewitching Table.
  • Alchemy Table.
  • Bar.
  • Bar Stool.
  • Banquet Table.
  • Jim’s set.
  • Lihzahrd Brick.
  • Lihzahrd.
  • Dungeon, Lihzahrd and Tundra Pots.
  • Mini Minotaur pet.
  • Pine Door, Pine Table, Pine Chair, and Pine Tree Block.
• More inclusive and customizable character creation that allows players to mix and match different character styles and voices. A third new voice type and the ability to change the voice’s pitch are also being added.
• Improvements to the Smart Cursor to relieve frustration when placing platforms.
• New graphical effects for the sun and clouds.
• Characters and worlds in the main menu are sorted by when they were last played, with the most recently played ones at the top. Additionally, all worlds that the selected character has visited before are marked with a small flag icon.
• A glitch was fixed which allowed creating almost any item. It involved the de-syncing of door tiles in multiplayer and placement of a Bast Statue.
• Liquid being stored inside Bubbles.
• Liquids can be stored inside Bubbles.
• The Rubblemaker and Echo Coating are available in pre-Hardmode.
• The different types of Planter Boxes are no longer unlocked by defeating specific bosses.
• Wormhole Potions and Potions of Return are easier to obtain.
• Moon Lord Boulders are in For the worthy.
• Flairon can be swung like thrown flails. It can still be used as a launched flail as well.
• Phaseblades can be thrown and stick to the ground where they land, dealing damage to any enemies that walk into them. They can be called back by the player.
• Zombie Arm creates Zombie gore when swung.
• Changes to the Harpoon.
• Several changes to town NPCs and their houses:
  • The Classy Cane can hit NPCs, which causes them to drop coins.
  • NPC houses no longer require a solid block for the NPC to stand on.
  • NPCs no longer require a house in order to appear. However, NPCs without a house will leave temporarily during the night.
  • The dialogue window of NPCs has a “Housing” option which includes hints on how a house can be built.
  • It is more transparent how a house is scanned.
• Slimes have a chance to drop Grass Seeds, Jungle Grass Seeds, and Acorns.
• Dungeon Bricks can be crafted with Hardmode ore.
• Stackable weapons, tools, and Clothier Voodoo Dolls.
  • Multiple items cannot be reforged at once, however.
  • Increased Rainbow Slime spawn rate.
• Changes to yoyos.
• Changes to the Paladin’s Hammer.
• Fish will appear in the water while fishing.
• In multiplayer, players can spectate other players while waiting to respawn after dying.
• The style of Party Presents and Presents can be manually set before placing, instead of being determined randomly when placed.
• Cannons and Snowball Launchers can deal damage when activated by Wires.
• Cannons also no longer require Cannonballs to be fired.
• Cannonballs can be placed as tiles. They can also be hammered to different shapes.
• Conveyor Belts can move enemies. They also can move items vertically.
• Earned banners no longer drop from their respective enemies. Instead, they can be claimed via a new menu in the inventory.
• Jungle Grass can be planted on Lihzahrd Brick.
• Improved Control Banners (the areas showing button mappings) for controllers on Console version Console and Mobile version Mobile, which display related buttons near their respective UI elements instead of displaying all buttons at the bottom of the screen.
• New graphical effect for when the Paladin’s Shield activates.
• New visual effect for pop-up texts when obtaining new items.
• New visual effect for pop-up text when crafting weapons and armor.
• Improvements to the Mobile version Mobile touch control editor:
  • Instead of placing buttons with a fixed size then editing their function, the user now places a type of button on the screen, then edits its function and size.
  • Control configurations can now be copied and pasted across loadouts.
  • New default presets.
  • New optional control scheme which removes the right virtual joystick.
  • New option of toggling “multi-touch” for a button, which has the following effects when turned on:
    • The button will remain pressed if the player drags their finger away from it, and will only be released when their finger leaves the screen.
    • If the player drags their finger onto another button that also has multi-touch enabled, that button is also pressed down. Dragging the finger away from this button will stop pressing it.
• Armor pieces now display their set bonus in gray text when not active.
• Hooks now mention their keybind in their tooltips.
• Mannequins (and Womannequins) can have their posture changed (e.g. sit down), hold items, and ride on mounts.
• The Slime debuff increases the damage of fire related debuffs, such as On Fire!.
• The defense icon shows how much damage is reduced by the player’s defense stat when hovered on, and has different sprites in Expert and Master Mode.
• Updated crafting features:
  • New UI screen for the Guide’s “Crafting” option and regular crafting, similar to the duplication menu in Journey Mode: listing all craftable items while having category tabs to show items by types, and a search bar to search for individual items.
  • Pressing ⚷ Open / Activate on a crafting station also opens the crafting UI.
  • Items in all nearby storage items can be used in crafting, instead of only a single opened one.
• New animation for the Barrel when a player interacts with it, indicating if it is open or closed, similar to Chests.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Magic: The Gathering’s new Lorwyn Eclipsed set is getting closer, but we can already expect another trip to New York not long after.

After the mildly disappointing Spider-Man set, though, we’re hoping the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collab will be a little more tubular.

And, if you’re already sold on meeting up with cardboard versions of the Heroes in a Half Shell, their friends, and their foes, then good news – Amazon is once again discounting boxes of Play Boosters, now down to their lowest ever price.

Attention Everyone: Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a jump button now!

You can also walk backwards, and sideways!!!

Why am I freaking out over this? Look. This is almost as exciting as when we all learned New Horizons would give us the ability to sit down on the ground.

This comes as a part of Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s 3.0 update, which dropped a day early today, giving access to a new Hotel area, loads of new decorative items, some quality of life features like bulk crafting, and Dream Islands you can build alongside friends. But as players have discovered since, it’s also added a subtle new feature to aid in construction and placement: essentially, a controlled way to step in the cardinal directions in very precise ways.

This feature is now tutorialed as part of obtaining the Construction App, though it’s possible it may be available prior to that, and it’s very easy to activate. You can use it any time by pressing the L button. Pressing it once will snap your character into place with a tiny little hop. Holding it down and moving the stick in a direction will let you take exactly one step in that direction, effectively the size of one “square” of space. This is ideal for activities such as precise furniture placement, or lining yourself up perfectly to hit rocks or even catch bugs.

So, sure, it’s not actually a huge deal – just a fun quality of life feature. It’s not like a REAL jump (and you can already jump small gaps automatically anyway). But Animal Crossing’s audience has historically gotten very excited about little touches like this, such as the wave of excitement when sitting on the ground was confirmed to be in the game, or the love for any number of other tiny details players have found over the years.

Anyway, if they ever add jump attacks it’s over for you people.

There are other small details in the new update worth celebrating, such as the ability to save individual custom designs to Slumber Islands (effectively giving you even more slots), and the fact that former Islanders visiting the Hotel will remember you.

We’ve got a comprehensive guide to the 3.0 update, including how to unlock everything and what’s included, as a part of our Animal Crossing: New Horizons Wiki guide. If you’re just getting back to New Horizons today after a long hiatus, we also have a number of tips for people getting back into the swing of things.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s anime film spinoff, Beginning of a New Era, released in theaters in Japan way back in May 2024. And now, it’s coming to the U.S. for a one-night-only theatrical release on February 27, 2026.

As shared by Crunchyroll, the film will hit select, to-be-announced theaters in the U.S. for a one-night screening next month, and shared an English-language trailer and poster alongside the news. Tickets will be available at a later date via the official English website, though it’s unclear how broad a release this film will actually get.

After about 10 hours in Hytale, the new survival crafter from some former Minecraft modders, there really isn’t a better way I could describe it other than to say it’s basically Minecraft 2. From the block-by-block breaking and building, to the stylized environments and enemies, to the procedural world generation, this feels like the, “What would we change if we had the chance to start over again?” version of the now legendary 2009 classic. Many games have been influenced by Mojang’s trendsetter, but this is more of a cover song than a subgenre from what I’ve seen so far (though I’ve got plenty more to play before my final review). And while developer Hypixel Studios’ lawyers might not love hearing me say that, I honestly don’t think it’s a bad thing. Even in Early Access, it’s a good cover!

All of the gameplay will be pretty familiar if you’ve put any time at all into Minecraft, but with some streamlining here and there. You no longer have to begin your journey punching trees, for instance, since basic tools are made with sticks and rubble that can be collected easily with your bare hands. Also, breaking the trunk of a tree will cause everything above it to collapse and drop its resources, which was almost enough to win me over on its own. I still to this day hate having to chop upwards to hollow out a tree in Minecraft!

Movement is also a lot more modern and fluid. You can jump up to three blocks high and pull yourself up, which feels like such a huge quality-of-life improvement over the one-block jump limit in Minecraft. It’s even possible to take a running leap at a ledge, hit the side, and pull yourself up. We’ve got proper parkour now, and I don’t know that I would ever want to give it up.

It also just runs better than Minecraft on my Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB RAM, and RTX 4070 Ti-powered system. Even with the draw distance cranked up, my framerates sit comfortably above 60. We’ll see how long that lasts when I start building elaborate megastructures, but for now it’s like butter.

Combat is fine. There are a handful of different weapon types, from swift-slashing double daggers to a classic sword and shield setup with more defensive options, and every one has its own unique charge attack and a special meter that can be filled up to release a devastating finisher. I’m impressed with the enemy variety so far, with everything from goblin bomb-throwers to really terrifying lava toads that can catch you with their tongues and pull you in for a very painful bite attack.

Building can be a little bit fiddly. We have more pieces to pick from, like proper roofs that make Minecraft’s classic stair tricks redundant. But sometimes I had to do silly stuff like building a dirt “mold” to make sure all the pieces were facing the right way. Still, once I got the hang of its quirks, I was able to start making some pretty neat-looking stuff.

There’s very little direction in this Early Access version of Hytale, currently. The main hub area, the Forgotten Temple, is a rotunda of literal Under Construction signs. I even stumbled into some dungeons out in the world where I’d be excited to throw the doors open only to find one of these disappointing barriers. It’s not clear what the larger, overarching goal is supposed to be, although I’m happy enough to build cool stuff and seek out new ores for higher-level tools at the moment. But I’m not sure if there will eventually be a story or bigger bosses to find or anything like that. I haven’t run into them yet if they exist already.

Overall, I’m quite enjoying my time with Hytale so far, though. Even if it is just Minecraft again, it’s an enjoyable rendition with some thoughtful tweaks and additions. It’s almost like someone’s wishlist of things Mojang will never do, or can’t do with its legacy tech. I plan to put in at least a few dozen more hours before I give it a final evaluation, but check back for more updates on my progress in the coming week.

Hellboy star Ron Perlman has expressed his bemusement at the Fallout franchise and his legendary status within it as narrator of all the video games, joking he was paid “$40 and a sandwich” to record his iconic “war never changes” line for Fallout 1.

Perlman first recorded the “war never changes” line as part of the intro for 1997’s Fallout video game. He’s played the narrator for pretty much every Fallout video game since, with the “war never changes” line becoming seared into the memories of a legion of fans. It’s a line that even made it into Amazon’s Fallout TV show, although Perlman didn’t say it himself.