Category: Video Games

‘Impossible’ Tetris NES Beaten for the First Time in 34 Years by 13-Year-Old Phenom

The NES version of Tetris, believed to be impossible to complete by even the most dedicated fans, has finally been beaten. Thirteen-year-old phenom Willis “Blue Scuti” Gibson was the first to pull off the improbable feat, which saw him reach level 157 before hitting what is being called the “final killscreen” by fans.”

A new video charts the community’s progress to beating the famously challenging version of the game, which lacks later features like the ability to store pieces. Even experts were only able to make it to around level 38 before it became impossible to keep up. However, a technique introduced in 2021 called “rolling,” which was achieved by utilizing the bottom of the controller, revolutionized the Tetris community and led to a host of new world records.

The spate of records led the community to wonder just how far Tetris could go. Players pressing into new frontiers began to discover corrupted colors, some of which made the blocks almost too dark to see, which they nicknamed “Charcoal” and “Dusk.” An in-depth investigation led players to realize that the game could be crashed in level 155, resulting in a new kill screen — jargon for a corrupted screen in classic games that prevents players from progressing.

It culminated in December 2023 with a battle between Blue Scuti, a relative unknown, and Justin “Fractal” Yu, the current Classic Tetris world champion, racing to reach the new kill screen and “beat” Tetris. Blue Scuti was the first to reach the goal, though amazingly, he missed the initial crash point. This led to a frantic few minutes as he tried to get to a new point where he could achieve a killscreen, finally achieving his goal in level 157. You can watch the complete run here.

It was a huge moment for the Tetris community some 34 years in the making. But the journey is never done, and Tetris fans are already looking toward new horizons. Assuming they were able to avoid the steadily growing number of crash points, a player could theoretically hit level 255, which features a pure red color scheme. Beating that level would bring players all the way back to Level 0, meaning they will have truly reached Tetris’ final frontier and returned to the beginning.

One way or another, the Tetris community remains as vibrant as ever as players continue to uncover new challenges.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

First Cut: Samurai Duel is a 2D fighter where swords are as deadly as they should be

I’m a sucker for games where swords are the pointy death delivery devices they truly are, rather than the big, blunt sticks so many turn them into. First Cut: Samurai Duel seems to be aiming its blades at my heart, then. It’s a 2D sidescrolling swordfighter in which each connecting blow means instant death, and it has a January 17th release date.

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Frogwares regain control of The Sinking City, but all old saves will break soon

Frogwares is “now the sole publisher of The Sinking City on all platforms”, says the developer. This brings to an end several years of uncertainty and litigation, which saw the Lovecraftian RPG delisted from Steam several times and at one point restored by its publisher via an allegedly pirated version of the game.

The downside is that an updated version of the game is coming to all storefronts in the coming weeks and it won’t be compatible with old save files.

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GTA 5 Is Leaving Xbox Game Pass Soon

Just six months after its much-hyped return to Xbox Game Pass, Grand Theft Auto V is set to once again drive off into the sunset.

As spotted on Twitter and elsewhere, GTA 5 is among the games that will be leaving the subscription service soon. Other notable departures include Persona 4 Golden and Persona 3 Portable. Here’s the full list of impending removals on console.

  • Grand Theft Auto V [Xbox Series X|S]
  • Grand Theft Auto V [Xbox One]
  • Persona 3 Portable
  • Persona 4 Golden
  • Garden Story
  • MotoGP 22

The games listed will be available until January 15, after which they’ll be available for up to 20 percent off. Xbox will also be rotating in a new selection of games for subscribers.

GTA V has been in and out of Xbox Game Pass since its initial debut back in 2020. Its most recent stint came in July 2023, shortly before the service’s price hike. Now a decade old, GTA V remains quite popular, with numerous content updates continuing to be released on all platforms.

In the meantime, work continues apace on GTA VI, which was officially revealed in a (leaked) trailer in late 2023. It’s currently slated to release sometime in 2025.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Nintendo Legend Shigeru Miyamoto Isn’t Retiring Anytime Soon

In a recent interview with The Guardian, Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto revealed he’s not quite ready to call it a career at Nintendo just yet.

“More so than retiring, I’m thinking about the day I fall over,” Miyamoto told The Guardian. “In this day and age you have to think about things in a five-year timespan, so I do think about who I can pass things on to, in case something does happen.”

“I’m really thankful that there is so much energy around things that I have worked on,'” he continued. “These are things that have already gone out into the world … they’ve been cultivated by others, other people have been raising them, helping them grow, so in that sense I don’t feel too much ownership over them any more.”

This has been a common refrain from Miyamoto, who previously said he wasn’t ready to retire when we interviewed him on the occasion of Super Nintendo World opening in the U.S.

Although Miyamoto has been an integral figure at Nintendo since joining the company 45 years ago and creating mega-popular game series like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong, he’s recently stepped back from his involvement in video game development. Instead, Miyamoto has set his sights on expanding Nintendo into different mediums like the Super Nintendo World theme park at Universal Studios or adapting its intellectual properties onto the silver screen with films like the Super Mario Bros. Movie and the upcoming Legend of Zelda live-action film.

“I don’t think of myself as a game designer. I’m about finding unique opportunities for Nintendo. The way things work here is that, more so than having a plan and following it, we come across certain things and from there, we try to find our own new path. The movies, the amusement parks, I’m excited to see what kind of organic things result from those,” Miyamoto said.

I don’t think of myself as a game designer. I’m about finding unique opportunities for Nintendo.

“I’m still very new to [the movie] industry and I’m still learning, but I’m trying to read a lot of scripts these days and learn about how they are developed, to see how we can create uniquely Nintendo films.”

Toward the end of the interview, Miyamoto jokingly said when he does retire from Nintendo, he hopes his illustrious resume won’t be forgotten.

“There is a scene in Iron Man where the president goes to his own company and the guard man doesn’t let him in, and he points at the portrait and says: ‘That’s me!’” Miyamoto said. “But I really hope that the teams I work with, at least, remember me as the creator of these things!”

Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh.

Talking Point: Our 2024 Nintendo Gaming Predictions

More Mario? Surely not!?

Welcome to the future.

You, dear reader, are reading these words in the far-off, distant, sci-fi future year that is 2024. While the hoverboards, flying vehicles, and inside-out trousers have all apparently been delayed in this branch of the timeline due to some spacetime-related cock up, at least Skynet is coming along nicely, eh?

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

NCSoft’s Project Skyline rumoured to be Horizon MMO, in the works for PC and Unreal Engine 5

Guild Wars publisher NCSoft’s long-rumoured Horizon: Zero Dawn spin-off is a full-blown MMORPG codenamed Project Skyline, will run on Unreal Engine 5, and is coming to PC and mobile with a PS5 release still TBC, according to a brace of job listings and CVs fished from the post-apocalyptic robo-wilds of yonder internet. Also according to the said listings, it won’t be out for a while.

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Tim Cain has taken his Fallout and The Outer Worlds dev stories to YouTube – and he’s having a great time

Tim Cain wrote what is perhaps gaming’s most famous and influential monologue: the introduction to Fallout. “War never changes,” he says. “People loved it. I’m like, ‘I must be a writer.’” Yet much more recently, when Cain sat down to write his memoirs, nobody really liked what came out on the page. “I was really, really bad at it,” he says. “I had half a dozen people read it, and they all pretty much said that the stories were good, but my writing wasn’t.”

Cain’s writing strengths, as fellow Fallout originator Leonard Boyarsky has suggested, lie in shortform. Which was bad news for anyone who wanted to read the definitive account of his four decades at the heart of Interplay, Troika and Obsidian, three of the most important RPG studios of all time. Thankfully, though, it turns out Cain is a natural raconteur. The same anecdotes that appeared flat and toneless in his memoirs go down a storm on YouTube. There, for the past seven months, Cain has been delivering his stories straight to camera, as if at a dinner party with 73,500 other people. “When I started the channel, I would effectively just look at something in the book and be like, ‘I’ll tell that story today,’” he says. “Now I spend as much time answering questions and doing videos based on things people ask about.”

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Star Wars Outlaws Arrives Late 2024

Star Wars Outlaws, the highly anticipated open world game from Ubisoft, will be released in late 2024.

Though Ubisoft and Star Wars owner Disney had previously remained tight lipped about the release date, a Disney Parks blog post quietly announced the release window, which was previously only confirmed to be sometime in 2024.

“Star Wars Outlaws, the open world Star Wars game, is set to release late this year,” the post said. “The game lets you explore distinct planets across the galaxy, both iconic and new. You can risk it all as Kay Vess, an emerging scoundrel seeking freedom and the means to start a new life, along with her companion Nix. If you’re willing to take the risk, the galaxy is full of opportunity.”

Star Wars Outlaws was revealed at the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase with a gameplay presentation coming soon after, and fans quickly grew obsessed with the cute axolotl-like Nix.

The game is set between Star Wars: Episode 5 – The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode 6 – Return of the Jedi, something developer Massive Entertainment said was due to the criminal underworld thriving at this time.

The developer also confirmed Star Wars Outlaws takes a more “handcrafted” and “manageable” approach to the open-world formula, with one planet being roughly the same size as two or three regions in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.