Pokémon TCG’s latest expansion, Mega Evolution, has only just landed, yet it’s already reshaping collector wishlists and competitive deck-building alike. From glittering Special Illustration Rares to powerful Mega ex cards, the set has proven to be a goldmine for players and investors.
Even when the set first launched, there were already those that had been declared the most valuable cards in Mega Evolution. Days later, TCGPlayer’s best-seller charts have now revealed which cards are flying off digital shelves, and why fans are rushing to pick them up.
Here are the most in-demand singles from Mega Evolution that are almost certainly worth chasing.
TL;DR: 10 Best-Selling Pokémon Cards from Mega Evolution
For those who want to jump right in, here are the top-selling Pokémon cards from the Mega Evolution set on TCGPlayer so far. The Mega Evolution expansion is already a collector’s dream, with Mega Lucario ex (Holo Rare) topping sales at a $1,299.99 market value & Mega Gardevoir ex close behind at $799.99.
Mega Venusaur ex ($499.99) and Marshadow ($199.99) round out the heavy hitters, while Lillie’s Determination and even Gumshoos are proving surprisingly popular. Below, however, check out the full rundown of the ten hottest cards fans are chasing right now.
10. Mega Latias ex – 181/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
At approximately $299.99, Mega Latias ex offers versatility in combat to go with its striking visuals, immediately showing why it’s one of the Pokémon TCG’s most in-demand cards from Mega Evolution.
Its Strafe attack enables clever switching plays, while Illusory Impulse deals a blistering 300 damage at the cost of discarding Energy.
Akira Egawa’s colourful, swirling art makes the Dragon-type legend look like it’s bursting straight out of the card. It’s as playable as it is collectable, and it earns its spot as the set’s tenth hottest seller.
9. Lillie’s Determination – 119/132 (Uncommon)
Currently trading around $8.99, this budget-friendly Supporter has nonetheless become a staple.
The effect, of Lillie’s Determination, refreshing your hand and potentially drawing up to eight cards if you’re at full Prizes, makes it both flexible and efficient.
Collectors also appreciate Atsushi Furusawa’s sunny artwork, which frames Lillie in a lovely pastoral scene, making even the lowest-rarity printing feel special.
8. Lillie’s Determination – 169/132 (Ultra Rare)
Jumping up in price, this version of Lillie’s Determination sits at about $38. While this variant of the card shares the same gameplay text, its foil treatment and alternate pose of Lillie in a breezy summer outfit elevate it for collectors.
Competitively useful and aesthetically pleasing, it hits that sweet spot of playability and visual charm for lovers of both the Mega Evolution set and the Pokémon Trading Card Game in general..
7. Mega Venusaur ex – 177/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
At roughly $220, Mega Venusaur ex shows why Grass decks are back in the conversation. Its Solar Transfer ability allows players to reposition Energy across the board, while Jungle Dump brings a hefty 240 damage and healing on top.
The bold, almost neon background complements Venusaur’s bulk, making it one of the most visually explosive cards of the set.
6. Gumshoos – 153/132 (Illustration Rare)
Surprisingly, Gumshoos is among the hottest sellers, shifting for around $59.99, above its current market price of $28. The card’s Evidence Gathering ability lets you effectively cycle a card from hand into your deck, smoothing consistency in unexpected ways.
Mina Nakai’s gritty alleyway artwork adds narrative noir flair, giving this otherwise humble Stage 1 the kind of character that turns heads.
5. Mega Lucario ex – 179/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
This Special Illustration Rare of Mega Lucario ex currently fetches about $280, and it’s easy to see why.
With Aura Jab accelerating Fighting Energy and Mega Brave hitting for a massive 270, Lucario slots perfectly into aggressive decks. The art, by 5ban Graphics, depicts Lucario mid-leap with fierce energy bursts against a Mega Venusaur, a dynamic visual that mirrors its high-impact playstyle.
Another entry for Lillie’s Determination, and this one’s both the most valuable and in-demand, going for around $225. The floral backdrop and soft colour palette make this perhaps the most elegant version.
Beyond its art, the card remains a valuable draw engine in decks seeking early-game acceleration, ensuring it appeals to both sides of the player base.
3. Mega Lucario ex – 188/132 (Hyper Mega Rare)
The undisputed third best-seller, the golden Mega Lucario ex card is topping Pokemon TCG listings charts at a staggering $900 price against a $570 market price.
With Aura Jab enabling Energy recovery and Mega Brave delivering 270 damage like its other versions, this card exemplifies the high-risk, high-reward nature of Mega ex.
The gold finish, courtesy of 5ban Graphics, turns Lucario into a gleaming centrepiece. Competitive players want it, collectors covet it, and together they’ve pushed it to the very peak. If you have one of the cheaper versions of Mega Lucario ex, it’s better to keep this one safe in your binder rather than put in your deck.
2. Marshadow – 146/132 (Illustration Rare)
Marshadow has spiked dramatically since launch, with listings around $110 vs an $73 market price. The attack Shadowy Side Kick not only hits decently, but also protects Marshadow from retaliation if it takes a knockout.
Combined with Tomomi Ozaki’s moody, lantern-lit forest artwork, the card’s blend of tactical resilience and atmospheric presentation explains its meteoric rise.
1. Mega Gardevoir ex – 178/132 (Special Illustration Rare)
Both sitting as the one of the highest-priced cards in Mega Evolution, and being the most popular, it’s not difficult to understand why this Mega Gardevoir ex is the biggest chase card in the set.
Gardevoir’s Overflowing Wishes accelerates Psychic Energy across your bench, while Mega Symphonia scales into massive damage with enough Energy in play.
Takuya’s art envelops the card in a symphony of pinks and whites, making it as enchanting as it is powerful in Psychic archetypes.
Ben Williams – IGN freelance contributor with over 10 years of experience covering gaming, tech, film, TV, and anime. Follow him on Twitter/X @BenLevelTen.
Shrine’s Legacy is a 16-bit action RPG that releases on PC on October 7. It tells the story of young heroes Rio and Reima as they try to banish an ancient evil and save the world.
Take one look at screenshots and you can tell the game’s aesthetic was inspired by the SNES era of RPGs. The whole game can be played solo or in two-person co-op, either through couch co-op or online via Remote Play or Parsec. If you play co-op, each of you controls either Rio (a melee fighter) or Reima (a ranged mage). If you play solo, you can swap between the two characters at any time, with AI taking over whichever one you’re not controlling.
The game was primarily made by the two-man dev team of longtime friends Alan Gabbard and Joseph Duke, with some help from other friends along the way. It’s the first release for their company Positive Concept Games, has been several years in the making, and was helped along by a successful Kickstarter campaign.
To celebrate the game’s impending release, we had a wide-ranging chat with Alan and Joseph. We touched on everything from their inspirations (which range from Chrono Trigger to Hollow Knight), to Shrine’s Legacy’s gameplay and story, to their plans for releasing on other platforms.
You two have been friends for a long time. At what point did you decide you wanted to create games together?
Joseph Duke: Funny enough, we’ve been working together on games almost as long as we’ve been friends.
Alan Gabbard: It was back in high school where I first met Joe in health class. I was a sophomore and Joe was a junior — for context, we are in our 30s now. One day, we began talking about our love for Super Nintendo games. Joseph had already dabbled a lot in RPG Maker and programming in general, and I had a passion for the writing and storytelling aspect in video games. Joe pitched me to come up with a storyline for a space shooter project he was working on, which sadly never came to fruition. However, I pitched the idea for what would eventually become Shrine’s Legacy and that’s when we got to work creating our first game.
It’s immediately clear that you were inspired by the SNES era. What games in particular were your favorites from that era, and what parts of Shrine’s Legacy did they inspire?
Alan: My favorite SNES games are Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, and Zelda: A Link to the Past. We got a lot of inspiration with our combat from Zelda and Terranigma, while Illusion of Gaia and Super Metroid inspired how we designed maps and level progression within dungeons. We take a lot of influence from Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and the Soul Blazer games when it comes to storytelling, dialogue writing, and the general moment-to-moment gameplay feel.
Joseph: My favorite Super Nintendo games are Final Fantasy VI, Terranigma and the other Soul Blazer games, Chrono Trigger, a Link to the Past, and Super Metroid. And really even more, my list would be huge if I kept going. So many inspirations have gone into Shrine’s Legacy, and Alan explains them well. To add to what he said, many people would see Secret of Mana influence, and that is true, mostly in terms of the co-op multiplayer aspect.
Nostalgia is powerful, but gaming has advanced a lot in the last 30 years. How difficult was it to balance staying true to your retro inspirations while also modernizing gameplay?
Joseph: Balancing hasn’t been terribly difficult, but we did make an effort to include options that many people expect, including setting the screen scale, rebindable inputs, controller support in addition to keyboard, button styles based on your controller, etc.
Alan: We are trying our damnedest to keep some of that old-school SNES challenge in combat intact (players can look forward to a Hard Mode setting post-launch) but also acknowledge that dying and having to retry difficult sections of a modern game can be frustrating. We have a “Retry” option for bosses that prove especially finicky so players can skip all the cutscenes leading up to the boss fights. Dying in any other part of the game will also reload you back to the most recent save point. And while there are no auto-saves, players are fully healed at each save point. It’s a tricky balance between quality of life while retaining some challenge.
Games with a focus on couch co-op are few and far between these days. Was that always something baked into the DNA of Shrine’s Legacy? Or did you land on it during the course of development?
Alan: It was always our intention to have a co-op capability from the beginning.
Joseph: Yes, it was always planned.
The game can be played solo and you can switch characters on the fly, with AI controlling whichever protagonist you aren’t playing as. How difficult was that to implement, and why was it important to you that it be playable solo or in co-op?
Joseph: Because Alan and I really enjoyed playing games together. We wish more Final Fantasy games included co-op, I believe they even removed it from later re-releases of Final Fantasy IX! Implementing it has indeed led to some challenges. We opted to try and keep the functionality as simple as possible, but there are certain downsides to that strategy. The AI character stays close to Player 1 during combat, so that the better you dodge, the more likely the AI is to also dodge. Occasionally though, they still find themselves getting hit when you don’t. I don’t think it’ll harm the gameplay too much, but it might be something that gets some improvements over time as we update the game.
Alan: Since it was planned from the start of development, adding co-op hasn’t been the most daunting interference with the process of making Shrine’s Legacy. As two friends that love RPGs, we have always felt not enough RPG games have true co-op options. Secret of Mana showed us that you can make a SNES-style action RPG that can be played solo or with friends in cooperative gameplay. That’s why it was important for us to achieve what the Mana games were doing in terms of sharing the experience with loved ones on the couch…or at a computer monitor for this initial PC release.
Gameplay is obviously important, but a good RPG also needs a compelling story. How important to you were the world building, characters, and narrative of Shrine’s Legacy?
Joseph: Very important. One thing we didn’t figure out until some ways in was how important humor and levity is in an otherwise mostly dramatic story. Luckily, we had plenty of time to sprinkle those things in. The story script actually went through several drafts over years before it was final. This was mostly from us leveling up our design game over time as we learned more. It’s still a fairly simple story, but we were determined to make the characters shine in particular.
Alan: I mentioned before that Final Fantasy and the Soul Blazer trilogy were instrumental to the narrative and dialogue. I approached the story as though we were telling something akin to a classic Final Fantasy tale, think Final Fantasy IV or Final Fantasy V. It was important to have a strong sense of balance between dramatic storytelling and levity like so many great JRPGs of the past had. The characters drive this story and the worldbuilding supplements that. Of course, outside mediums influenced how I wrote the story and characters. Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of my biggest influences in that regard.
How would you describe the tone of the story?
Alan: Shrine’s Legacy is largely a fun fantasy adventure romp like so many classic JRPGs that are beloved. However, the tone shifts to a more dramatic feel where appropriate, especially in the latter half of the game.
Can you tell us about the exploration and dungeons? Is exploration linear or are there secret areas to unlock?
Joseph: The world of Shrine’s Legacy is quite large and dense, especially for an indie game. There are tons of secrets and hidden spots, even a few completely optional areas and dungeons you could easily miss out on if you rush through the game. It’s mostly linear in progression order, but there are points where the story opens up and gives you options of what to tackle next.
Alan: JRPGs of the old days had a tendency to disguise their linearity quite well and would sometimes let you tackle certain story beats out of order. I’m happy to say Shrine’s Legacy does the same thing! It’s not completely linear, but it has enough linearity to tell a focused story. There are plenty of secrets to find and a few dungeons can be completed out of the intended order!
Do all dungeons include boss fights? How varied are they, and what would you say is the difficulty level of those fights?
Alan: Not all dungeons have a boss battle, but most do. Every boss fight is very different, many requiring use of some puzzle knowledge to defeat. The difficulty is meant to amp up the further you progress in the game. We’ll be adding a few miniboss battles after the game launches, plus the hardest boss battles in the game, which unfortunately had to be cut due to time. More importantly, we’d like to adjust boss and enemy AI for our planned Hard Mode. We are even considering an eventual boss rush mode…
Joseph: I believe there are two mini-dungeons that don’t have a true boss fight, but every single other dungeon does. There are only a couple reskin bosses, but even they look and act different than their original counterpart. Every other boss is completely unique and a lot of effort went into designing them. As for difficulty, this is no Hollow Knight or Silksong. While the game tries to deliver a challenge, it gives you many ways to become stronger i.e. by exploring for treasure, grinding levels, making potions that can heal or buff you during the battle if you are struggling.
But you might be surprised to learn that Hollow Knight did encourage a lot of the design philosophy for how the bosses themselves function. We tried to approach boss design in a “each battle is a dance” kind of way where you must respect the patterns of the boss and react accordingly. And like Alan mentions, we’d love to make a truly Hard Mode whenever we can. Not a simple numbers buff, but a true rework of how you have to play the game that makes every boss a truly fearsome foe.
How about puzzles? Are there lots of them, and are they required to progress or are they optional to find gear and items?
Alan: There are a lot of puzzles in the game. You use magic spells in combat, but they also have practical uses on the field for traversal and solving puzzles. Think of it like Link’s toolkit in Zelda games. Which, if I’m being honest, about 50% of Shrine’s Legacy’s DNA is a Zelda-like. We’re still an action RPG at heart, but I’m confident Zelda-like fans would enjoy our game if they don’t mind a little more story and dialogue than normal!
Joseph: There are lots of both required and optional puzzles, though we try to keep the puzzle difficulty and length on the lower end to keep the pace of the game strong.
How long would you estimate it will take a new player to complete a playthrough?
Joseph: I would say anywhere from 12–28 hours depending on your pace and level of completion. Probably around 18 hours on average.
Alan: Anywhere from 16–20 hours on a casual playthrough. Doing everything will take about 25–30 hours for a first-timer without a guide.
We know about the game’s release on Steam. Are there plans to bring it to other platforms in the future?
Alan: We are also releasing on GOG and Epic on October 7! We plan to bring Shrine’s Legacy to Nintendo Switch as soon as humanly possible after launching on PC. PlayStation and Xbox depends on how well sales go.
Joseph: I’ll only add that the goal is to try and get the Switch port out by early next year. The whole process will be a learning process though, as it’s not something we’ve ever done before and I don’t know how much effort it’ll be yet. I guess what I’m saying is please be patient with us!
Is there anything else you’d like to say to players eager to get their hands on Shrine’s Legacy?
Joseph: Shrine’s Legacy has been a labor of love and years and years of hard work. It won’t be perfect on launch, no game is, but we are going to keep supporting it for some time. We want this game to be as incredible as it can be. But more than anything, I hope it brings you back to the good old times when games were weird, fun, and bold in their design decisions.
Alan: More than anything, I hope we’ve delivered on the promises we made with our Kickstarter campaign. Some of those promises will have to be fulfilled after launch (like getting to wear a Postcat hat). We’ve spent the better part of a decade creating this first commercial game, so we hope the wait was worthwhile to everyone excited. Be sure to tell your friends and loved ones to join in on a co-op session with you! Because, really, getting to see strangers play our baby in co-op will be rewarding in and of itself. Hopefully, this is only the beginning of our game dev careers and we attain enough success to keep making more art through video games. We love and appreciate all of our supporters throughout all these years. Thank you, and enjoy!
Good news, Pokémon fans in the UK, Mega Evolution is finally up for preorder at Amazon (see here). With their reliable invite system, it’s your best chance of securing the brand new TCG expansion at its intended retailer price.
By our current predictions, we expect invites to start going out at least within the next few days, and then in several waves as we get closer to release day.
While the new set is already available in the US (releasing on September 26), for EMEA regions (including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), the official release was pushed back to October 10 due to “challenges impacting product delivery dates,” according to The Pokémon Company.
Now, with Amazon launching preorders and keeping the scalpers at bay with their handy invite system, trainers have been presented with a great opportunity to pick up the new expansion.
Right now, you can request invites to buy the Elite Trainer Boxes for £44.99, both Lucario and Gardevoir versions, alongside the Booster Bundle with 6 packs for £23.94, Booster Displays for £71.82, and finall the triple packs featuring Psyduck and Goldduck, alongside three boosters for just £12.99.
Robert Anderson is Senior Commerce Editor and IGN’s resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter/X or Bluesky.
99 Nights in the Forest is a survival horror Roblox experience that will see you scavenging for supplies by day and protecting your camp at night. While the main aim is to explore the forest and rescue four missing children, it’s not quite as simple as it seems. Entities will stalk you at night, and there’s the addition of cultists that will periodically visit your camp and attack.
Updates often bring new enemies to contend with and new ways to enhance your base. One of the earliest updates that the popular experience launched was the Classes Update. There are now over 20 classes in 99 Nights, all with their own perks. To buy new classes, you need Diamonds, and that’s where the 99 Nights in the Forest codes come in handy!
Working 99 Nights in the Forest Codes (October 2025)
These are the currently working codes for 99 Nights in the Forest:
afterparty – 15x Gems
Expired 99 Nights in the Forest Codes (October 2025)
There are currently no expired 99 Nights in the Forest codes.
How to Redeem 99 Nights in the Forest Codes
When you launch into 99 Nights in the Forest, these are the steps you need to follow to redeem codes:
Locate the Diamond icon next to the green plus in the bottom left corner
When the Diamond menu opens up, find the blue codes button on the right
Click codes
Copy and paste the code from this article
Hit submit
Why Isn’t My 99 Nights in the Forest Code Working?
Codes for Roblox experiences are usually case-sensitive, so the best way to ensure you’ve got a working code is to directly copy it from this article. We check all codes before we upload them, so you can guarantee they’re working. Just double check that you haven’t copied over an extra space!
When is the Next 99 Nights in the Forest Update?
The next update scheduled for 99 Nights in the Forest is on Saturday October 4th. This will be the Taming Update, that will allow you to keep a tamed animal as a pet and have it protect you.
Lauren Harper is an Associate Guides Editor. She loves a variety of games but is especially fond of puzzles, horrors, and point-and-click adventures.
Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Studios still doesn’t have a solution for the shooter’s groaning installation size on PC — but it is working on it.
In an update posted to Steam earlier today, Arrowhead’s deputy technical director, Brendan Armstrong, penned the first in a series of posts in which the engineering team talks about the “technical health” of the game, as well as the “technical challenges we’re working through.”
Admitting that the installation size “seems to be a hot topic right now” — at 150GB, Helldivers 2 takes up three times the space on PC than it does on console — the developer revealed that one of the reasons the PC size is so much bigger is because of data duplication and mechanical hard drives.
“The main issue with a mechanical HDD is seek time,” Armstrong explained. “An HDD stores data on a spinning platter, and a physical arm with a read head has to move across the platter to find and retrieve data. The time it takes for this arm to ‘seek’ or move to the correct location is a significant performance bottleneck.
“Imagine a large game level with various objects — trees, rocks, buildings, props. If the data for these objects is scattered all over the hard drive, the read head has to physically jump around the disk, which adds a lot of time to the loading process.”
This, the director added, is why Arrowhead deliberately duplicates certain data files like a common tree texture or a sound effect and “place copies of them in physically close proximity to where they would be needed in the game.”
“Much of the data in the PC version of Helldivers 2 is duplicated. The practice of duplicating data to reduce loading times is a game development technique that is primarily used to optimize games for older storage media, particularly mechanical HDDs and optical discs like DVDs,” the director explained. “This practice is largely unnecessary for games deployed on Solid State Drives (SSDs) which is why the console versions of Helldivers 2 do not do this.”
That said, the post admits that with the advent of SSDs — which store data on flash memory chips that have no moving parts — seek time is virtually nonexistent, but as long as mechanical HDDs are part of the minimum spec PC requirements, it has to be included. Steam user surveys are “unable to give us data on mechanical HDD use in the overall gamer population,” but Arrowhead’s “best estimates” put it at around 12% of all PC gamers.
“Until we can more accurately determine the number of mechanical HDDs that Helldivers 2 is installed on, it is difficult to know how many players will be impacted by reducing the amount of data duplication,” the post said. “Even if that number is small, keep in mind that the load time for each player dropping into a mission is determined by the slowest member of the squad.”
While Arrowhead grapples with this issue and tries to get better data on how many of their players use mechanical HDDs, the team said it’s made “some small gains in the next update” by sweeping for unused assets and “obvious problems,” but admits we “will not likely notice them because the new stuff we’ve added will eat those gains.”
In the longer term, the team will make improvements to the engine to ensure the game doesn’t waste RAM loading common data that isn’t needed.
“Beyond that, the remaining work is a bigger, riskier, more speculative project where we apply some kind of compression to the game data and potentially replicate some of the de-duplication we do on consoles,” the post concludes. “We don’t yet know if the impacts to load-times could make these approaches infeasible.
“We’re taking your concerns very seriously but there are no easy solutions. Until we live in a world where we know that most of our PC players are using SSD drives, sacrificing some extra hard drive space is necessary to ensure we’re all able to load into missions in a reasonable amount of time. We’ve clearly reached the limits of how much duplicated data is acceptable so smarter solutions and compromises are now required. We are very carefully weighing up the costs and tradeoffs of the options we have, and we’ll be sure to find a better balance between loading times and installation size soon.”
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.
Sony has been on a roll lately with custom designed PS5 DualSense controllers. We’ve seen limited-edition controllers with themes based on Ghost of Yotei, Astro Bot, Death Stranding 2, and more. The next one to release is now available to preorder at Amazon. It’s a God of War-themed PS5 controller that’s made to celebrate the series’ 20th anniversary. The God of War 20th Anniversary Limited Edition controller costs $84.99 and will release on October 23, 2025.
God of War 20th Anniversary DualSense PS5 Controller
The design itself is elegantly understated. It’s a white controller, with a jagged red stripe starting on the right trigger and going down the front of the device, past the face buttons and onto the grip. It’s an instantly recognizable design, as the stripe matches the Omega tattoo on Kratos’ face. The white body of the controller also echoes Kratos’ skin, which is white because the Oracle cursed him to wear the ashes of his dead family forever (fun times!).
The face buttons are white, with all-red symbols (circle, triangle, square, and cross), and the D-pad is white with tiny red arrows on each direction. The touchpad is also white. Unlike most other PS5 controller colors, the inside of the grips and the area around the thumbsticks is also white. On the back of it there’s a God of War 20th Anniversary logo.
The original God of War launched in 2005 for PlayStation 2. Since then, our boy Kratos has appeared in a whole lot of games across nearly every piece of PlayStation hardware released in the meantime. He’s killed gods on PS3, PS4, and PS5, as well as the handheld platforms PSP and PS Vita. He’s killed gods in Greek mythology and Norse mythology. No mythology is safe.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Few games have given us as many iconic one-liners as NetherRealm’s fighting franchise, Mortal Kombat, but this week we’ve learned that the voice behind one of the most famous — “Toasty!” — is leaving the studio.
Audio director Dan Forden worked at Midway and its successor NetherRealm Studios since 1989, most famously on the Mortal Kombat franchise. It’s his voice we hear cry “Toasty!” in falsetto when we pull off an impressive uppercut. First appearing in 1993’s Mortal Kombat II, Toasty went on to become one of the most recognizable lines of dialogue in all video games.
Now, however, Forden is leaving NetherRealm, writing in a heartfelt message on social media that he was “really proud of what [the studio] accomplished.”
“Wednesday was my last day at NetherRealm. We made a lot of fun stuff over the years. I’m really proud of what we accomplished as well as how much fun we had making that stuff,” Forden wrote on Instagram. “There are so many smart, talented people there — look for more great things to emerge over the next several years. I love the little touches that people left around the studio like this little Toasty homage on the bathroom mirror.
“I wouldn’t have lasted 37 years in the industry if fans weren’t out there playing the games we made. Thanks to all of you for supporting what we’ve done. Live long and… Toasty!”
Asked in the comments why he was leaving now, Forden explained: “I figured I’d been around long enough. Want to reclaim that time for my own interests.”
In August, development chief Ed Boon said Mortal Kombat 1 had sold over 6.2 million copies. Its predecessor, Mortal Kombat 11, became the best-selling game in the franchise by passing Mortal Kombat X’s nearly 11 million units sold worldwide soon after launch. By 2022, Mortal Kombat 11 had sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. Clearly, Mortal Kombat 1 has underperformed compared to previous games in the series.
NetherRealm has said it shifted to “focus to the next project in order to make it as great as we possibly can,” but it has yet to say what it is. Current speculation points to Injustice 3, a continuation of NetherRealm’s DC fighting game series.
As for what else is happening in the Mortal Kombat world? Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, developed by Digital Eclipse and published by Atari, launches at the end of October. Movie sequel Mortal Kombat IIhas been delayed from October 24, 2025, to May 15, 2026. It’s thought Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema believe the movie — which stars Karl Urban alongside Adeline Rudolph, Jessica McNamee, Josh Lawson, Ludi Lin, Mehcad Brooks, Tati Gabrielle, Lewis Tan, and more — will perform better at the summer box office given the wild fan response to the trailer.
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.
Rock Band 4 is being delisted from both the Xbox and PlayStation digital stores this weekend due to expiring lusic licenses, developer Harmonix has confirmed.
The news was posted across the game’s official Discord channel and its subreddit. The warning has come with just days to act, and arrives on the eve of the game’s 10th anniversary.
“On Sunday, October 5, 2025, Rock Band 4 turns 10,” reads the team’s statement. “What a ride it’s been.”
“With this milestone comes one big change: the original licenses for the core soundtrack are expiring. Because of that, Rock Band 4 will be removed from the PlayStation and Xbox digital stores. If you already own the game, nothing changes — you’ll keep full access and still be able to download the game and songs to any new, compatible devices. The same applies to Downloadable Content (DLC): songs will come down as they hit the 10-year mark, but anything you’ve purchased will remain in your library.
“We’re so grateful for the passion this community has shown. From the team, it’s been a special experience to serve you with Rivals challenges, a super deep DLC library and a best in class band sim. If you’ve been meaning to grab a few last songs, now’s the time.”
As of Sunday, Rock Band 4 and the Rock Band 4 DLC songs that were specifically released on its launch day will no longer be available to purchase. It has been clarified on Discord that DLC tracks from prior Rock Band games (released before Rock Band 4) are not being delisted “yet”, but the team “will be figuring those out over the coming months.”
Rock Band’s unique approach to DLC has resulted in the ability for owners to carry their libraries of songs (plus exports of the tracklists of past Rock Band games) across three generations of console hardware. The approach has seen thousands of pieces of bespoke DLC released for the series since 2007, almost all of which can be played within Rock Band 4.
The last DLC of the Rock Band 4 era was released in January 2024, after eight years of weekly content. The news that the axe is now looming for all Rock Band content, however, marks a sad moment in the history of the 18-year-old series.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.
OpenAI’s Sora 2 generative video app has gone live, and immediately it’s been used to create countless videos featuring licensed characters, such as Mario, Pikachu and an array of other Pokémon.
While videos featuring Pikachu in Saving Private Ryan, or Mario in Star Wars, might look surprising, a statement from OpenAI earlier this week suggested the company knew exactly what people would be getting up to when Sora 2 arrived — and what the company’s own algorithms had apparently been trained on.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, OpenAI has already begun contacting movie studios and other intellectual property owners to discuss next steps — and offer them the chance to retroactively opt out of their fictional characters being available within Sora 2’s AI videos.
But, for now, it’s open season on Pikachu and his pals, as these initial results from Sora 2 demonstrate (thanks, Nintendo Life):
Ever wondered what Pikachu would sound like if he could actually chat away in human speech (and wasn’t secretly Ryan Reynolds)? Well, wonder no longer — though you may regret listening to this.
While characters are fair game, OpenAI has previously said that real-life people, whether that’s users of the app or the those seeking to use the likeness of celebrities, will need to have manually opted in to having their appearances generated. Of course, OpenAI boss Sam Altman has allowed for his likeness to be used — so here he is having a lightsaber battle with Pikachu:
Alongside Pokémon, Nintendo’s own Mario characters have been getting plenty of use. And then there’s the final clip below, which mashes together Valve’s Portal and Activision’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (and also Twin Peaks).
This is my favorite Sora 2 generation I’ve made so far.
It can seamlessly combine the disparate gameplay elements of Portal and Tony Hawk Pro Skater and then slip in a Twin Peaks reference… and generate in 1.5 minutes. Unreal. pic.twitter.com/C3XUEzgHsH
— 🌟twinstar🌟 ଘ(✿˵•́ ᴗ •̀˵)੭🧁 (@1ketaminepatch) October 1, 2025
Is any of this legal? “In short, we don’t have a definitive answer yet,” business lawyer and creator of the Virtual Legality podcast Richard Hoeg told IGN today. “There are indications in some quarters that training on protected materials is likely going to be deemed legal so long as the materials themselves were acquired for some lawful purpose (and not pirated). But on the output side, the Disney/Dreamworks lawsuit makes some good arguments for why/how the law should expect these platforms to police prompts for infringing requests, especially if they are already policing for something else (porn, bigotry, etc.). But all of those are still just arguments, not settled law..
Hoeg continued: “The law moves slowly, far slower than technology, which is why you see these tech companies racing ahead of it a bit. My best guess is that OpenAI is probably going to be okay long term on the training sets they used (assuming they weren’t pirated), and that the ‘opt out of training’ option therefore won’t do much of anything. Where they really need to concern themselves is on the output side and/or if they are marketing their software’s abilities with protected content themselves.”
IGN has contacted Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for comment.
Last week, the famously litigious The Pokémon Company formally responded to the use of Pokémon TV hero Ash Ketchum and the series’ theme tune by the Department of Homeland Security, as part of a video showing people being arrested and handcuffed by law enforcement agents. “Our company was not involved in the creation or distribution of this content,” a spokesperson told IGN, “and permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property.”
I enjoy a good bout in a fighting game from time to time, with Bandai Namco’s Tekken being my favorite 3D fighter out there. Conveniently enough, I am also a fan of board games, so when these two passions of mine mingle with one another, such as with the Guilty Gear Strive or Street Fighter V board games, I make sure to check them out. Now, thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign over on Gamefound, it’s time for the King of Iron Fists to enter the cardboard ring with Tekken: The Board Game.
The game is made by Go On Board, the publisher of The Witcher: Old World and Cyberpunk 2077- The Board Game among others. I’ve had a chance to get some rounds in with a prototype of Tekken: The Board Game, graciously sent to me by the developer, and I have to say, it may have nailed the feeling of “reading your opponent” in a fighting video game better than any other board game I’ve played.
In Tekken, two players (the final release will include a solo mode and optional tournament expansion for up to eight) pick from their favorite fighters and duke it out until one player’s life is gone. Characters I got to try out and that will be included in the base game are Jin, Kazuya, Paul, King, Nina, Asuka, Yoshimitsu, and Jack-8, each coming with detailed minis featuring the character and a pretty nifty colorful accent.
Playing a match of Tekken feels a bit like a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, and is fairly quick to pick up and learn. Matches are short, too, taking 10 to 15 minutes. Attacks are dictated by cards that you play in front of you, which show not only the area they are targeting, either high, mid, or low, but also the effects and damage the attack will do, indicated by icons.
At any given time, only one person is on the offense, laying out cards and trying to dish out damage. The idea behind this system is born out of the need to keep Tekken feeling fast and dynamic, Go On Board told IGN. “To truly capture the dynamic feeling of the video game, we needed a mechanic that keeps the fight fast-paced and full of tension. In Tekken, reading your opponent’s intentions and reacting at the perfect moment is crucial – blocking a key attack can break a combo and turn the tide of battle. The ‘guess the right card’ mechanic embodies that essence. It’s simple and intuitive, like pressing a button on a controller, but mastery comes from deeply understanding your opponent and predicting their moves. It’s all about timing, reading, and skill – just like in the original game.”
For the defending player, your only goal is to read the opponent and try to guess which area the attacker’s card is going to target, indicated by a card played face down in front of them. Guessing correctly will stop the attack in its tracks, and the defending player becomes the attacker, with their first attack being unblockable. Guessing wrong, however, not only will let the attack go through and connect, but the player who played the card continues their assault and is able to play another card, extending their combo and potentially triggering added bonuses based on their character’s specific combos or how lanes on cards may line up with the next.
Only three attacks can happen before roles reverse, with the exception of a once-per-game HEAT action that each player can take, which allows one additional attack to be played, or lets the player continue attacking after a correct guess by the defensive player.
This element of trying to read your opponent to guess what they are going to do next is an intrinsic part of fighting video games. Having it condensed in such a way to a one-in-three chance to guess correctly works shockingly well. The actions that an attack can trigger are also rather straightforward: you can deal damage, move your character, push an opponent, or sweep an opponent, causing them to fall down, letting you deal extra damage. Your character’s special Rage attack is a bit more complicated, but my friends and I never felt overwhelmed.
Tekken also uses mechanics that make it feel like you’re playing, well, Tekken. Pushing an opponent into the wall causes a wall bounce, dealing damage. You can break through stage walls or floors into other areas and dish out that extra hurt on the ground. Even the small arenas you fight on feel very Tekken-like, giving you enough space to move around, but not so much that it turns reaching your opponent into a chore.
Tekken has never been about playing keep-away and hurling fireballs at one another; instead it’s about getting in close and letting loose devastating punch-and-kick combos, and I think Go On Board has captured that spirit perfectly. “Each fighter in Tekken: The Board Game feels truly unique thanks to a combination of design elements. Each character has a distinct deck composition, combo structure, and a Rage ability that reflects their iconic playstyle from the video game. Some characters also feature unique components or mechanics that set them apart even further.”
When the game comes out, fighters will have a variety of ways to check out Tekken and prove themselves. The core box contains eight fighters (Jin, Kazuya, King, Paul, Jack-8, Yoshimitsu, Asuka, and Nina) and four stages (Sanctum, Urban Square, Descent into Subconscious, and Into the Stratosphere). Or, if you just want a taste, a starter set featuring Jin and Kazuya and the Descent into Subconscious will also be available.
But any Tekken fan knows that one of the defining aspects of the series is its characters, and Go On Board is bringing many of them over through various expansion sets that you can purchase separately, too. These include the following.
Expansion 1
Fighters: Jun, Leroy, Xiaoyu, Panda
Stage: Yakushima
Expansion 2
Fighters: Heihachi, Reina, Lee, Kuma
Stage: Secluded Training Ground
Expansion 3
Fighters: Azucena, Leo, Lili, Shaheen
Stage: Ortiz Farm
Expansion 4
Fighters: Lidia, Eddy, Victor, Raven
Stage: Seaside Resort
Expansion 5
Fighters: Lars, Alisa, Claudio, Zafina
Stage: Rebel Hanger
Expansion 6
Fighters: Hwoarang, Law, Steve Fox, Feng
Stage: Arena
Expansion 7
Fighters: Dragunov, Bryan
Stage: Midnight Siege
“Legendary” Expansion
Fighters: True Ogre, Mokujin
Stage: Tekken 3 Stage “Carnival”
When asked about what went into deciding the character pairings, the design team not only wanted to make sets that played well together, but also ones that made sense from a narrative standpoint. “When creating the character packs, we took into account several key aspects. We wanted each box to include characters that work well together mechanically, but also share meaningful narrative connections. For example, the pack featuring Jun, Xiaoyu, Panda, and Leroy with the Yakushima board was designed this way because Yakushima is Jun’s stage. Xiaoyu once fought off the Jacks units attempting to reach the Sanctum near Yakushima, while Panda is Xiaoyu’s close friend, and Leroy served as her mentor.”
With so many characters, including my personal favorites Leo, Steve, and Hwoarang all making appearances, it has my blood pumping, and I can’t wait to see how they play. Even in the core box, I could already tell that care was being put into highlighting qualities of the characters to make them feel different from one another, such as King’s ability to throw opponents around or Yoshimitsu’s special wheel that lets you bid life to spin for a potential big payoff. I can’t wait to see how all the other characters feel.
From the different stage hazards, the quick-to-learn systems, and highly detailed miniatures, Tekken: The Board Game has quickly shot up my list as one of my most anticipated board games next year. My biggest worry is that, with just how many characters they’re promising, some will run the risk of feeling samey. Time will tell how successfully the team is able to avoid that potential pitfall, but considering that by taking the expansion approach with the characters, not to dissimilar to something like Unmatched, means fans can pick and choose from those packs they want, and aren’t required to buy them all. Even the core box offers a good bit of variety on its own. You can have a perfectly good time with that alone.
While Tekken’s initial campaign is over, late pledges will be starting soon with an expected delivery date of April 2026, but if you want to try it out for yourself, head over to Board Game Arena right now, or check out the WIP rules.
Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.
