Will look to “support indie developers and reignite classic franchises”.
Back in the day, Acclaim Entertainment was a pretty formidable force in the games industry. It has dozens upon dozens of games under its belt, including the first two Burnout titles, the Turok series, NBA Jam, and of course, Mary-Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16 – License to Drive. Ahh, good times.
Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt in September 2004, but now, just over 20 years later, Acclaim is making a comeback.
A Cracking Clean-up: Peek Inside The Home of Wallace & Gromit With The PowerWash Simulator Devs
Jess Green, Marketing Manager, FuturLab
Cracking clean Gromit! We hope you’re ready for a grand day out to clean up the world of Aardman’s endlessly inventive duo, in the new PowerWash SimulatorWallace & Gromit Special Pack, available today.
We worked closely with our partners at Aardman Animations to faithfully recreate the world of 62 West Wallaby Street in PowerWash Simulator. In the special pack’s five new levels, you can explore the nooks and crannies of their garden, kitchen and dining room and basement, before blasting into space to clean the Moon Rocket.
Grab the cheese and crackers while FuturLab’s Mark Ginbey, who writes PowerWash Simulator, and Animator Alannah Meek, who works on the game’s charming animations, take us behind-the-scenes of bringing the pack, and the WASH LAD, to life!
Get Cracking!
A key part of designing any PowerWash Special Pack is deciding why everything got so messy in the first place. In the case of the Wallace & Gromit pack, things have gone a bit pear-shaped over at 62 West Wallaby Street following a mechanical malfunction – the biggest disaster since the cracker catastrophe of ’89!
“Creating the story for such beloved creations was quite a daunting prospect, but luckily they’re a mucky pair who effortlessly find themselves in all manner of sticky situations, so ideas flowed as quickly as porridge from a malfunctioning AutoChef,” says Ginbey.
“There was no need for any convoluted over-arching narrative, we just needed to put the pair in a series of familiar environments and ask ourselves ‘what could possibly go wrong here?’ Then it was just a case of letting the dirt tell the story.”
“Incredibly, we were also helped by Aardman’s amazing writer Finbar Hawkins to finesse the script and give authenticity to our ideas.”
Well Done, Lad
The WASH LAD is all charged up and ready to assist you in your cleaning escapades, along with their very own industrial washer.
Based on Wallace’s existing LAD (Labor Assistant Device), that first appeared in Wallace & Gromit’s World of Invention, the WASH LAD has been adapted in a couple of different areas to better suit this niche task. From the original, we changed the arms to hinge at the elbows – crucial to provide the elbow grease needed to slough off the muck in the pack. We switched out the wheels for legs, to give our WASH LAD the full range of motion to reach up, crouch down and clean every crevice.
“We created a brand-new character model for Wallace and Gromit, keeping as many elements from the original LAD character as possible,” says Meek. “This was then skinned to the PowerWash Simulator character rig, and a new set of animations were created to better match the LAD character, mainly focusing on making it feel more robotic than the PWS character.”
As you pilot WASH LAD’s stout and sturdy frame, you’ll notice a distinct height difference from the usual PowerWash Simulator character model, as well as the metallic sounds of the hydraulics powering the small bot. It’s also particularly fun to team up with your friends to tackle the filth as a small robot army.
Level Deep Dive
Before we all settle in front of the TV with some cheese and crackers, let’s take a look at our inventive pals’ cosy home, starting with the Dining Room and Kitchen.
Wallace & Gromit’s Dining Room & Kitchen
You’ll be able to spot references from throughout the brand’s history and interact with moving elements such as the train set to immerse yourself within the action.
“The toy train was a challenge to set up animation for!” says Meek, “Washable objects in PowerWash Simulator can’t use the standard animation set up so we had to devise a new system to animate the train and make sure all the carriages follow the train tracks smoothly with a spline curve. Hopefully players will have fun riding the toy train around the circuit!”
Wallace & Gromit’s House
Soak up the serenity of sleepy British suburbs in this level, where you’ll hose down Wallace & Gromit’s quaint front garden and front façade of their classic two-up-two-down. Here, you’ll also walk in the pawprints of an icon as you stoop your way into Gromit’s kennel and have a snoop through his belongings, all in the name of cleaning, of course!
As well as a couple of iconic inventions, like the Soccamatic and Shopper 13, you can also flip the pond to complete the driveway, just like in A Close Shave.
The Knit-O-Matic
The Knit-O-Matic’s in a bit of a tangle, requiring some TLC (tender-loving-cleaning). Head down to the basement to scrub up the infamous contraption – there’s ‘knot’ a moment to lose!
Power up the goliath machine to give it a thorough service, and don’t forget to check the technical (and-not-so technical) drawings!
Meek adds: “Animating washable items, like the Knit-O-Matic, really breathes life into the scene and adds an extra layer of detail for the players to have fun with!”
This lofty space is one to settle into, with high ceilings, heavy machinery and heaps of basement-dwelling odds and ends. When you’re done, give yourself a round of applause by powering up the auto-wash machine! Pfft, automatic washing is over-rated!
Wallace & Gromit’s Vehicles
A rare rain-free day in the usually drizzly English climate can only mean one thing – time to give the car a hose-down! Not one for normalcy, however, Wallace’s collection of vehicles is far from your average hatch-back.
Everything from the Snomanotron to the Top Bun bakery van is caked in filth, even the iconic Techno Trousers need some soapy assistance – just don’t put them through the wrong spin cycle!
The Moon Rocket
Restore the Moon Rocket to its former brie-lliance in the final level of the pack. Covered in more than just stardust, the duo’s space craft has seen better days. Blast off the muck coating its bodywork, before venturing inside to revive the cosy cockpit.
Oh, and there’s also the aftermath of a certain extra-terrestrial picnic that could do with a quick spritz while you’re up there.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this access-all-areas look at our new Pack. See you at 62 West Wallaby Street for a cracking cleaning adventure – I’ll stick the kettle on!
Xbox Game Pass members can play the base game, PowerWash Simulator, as part of their membership. TheWallace & Gromit Special Pack is available today for a separate purchase on the Xbox Store (a copy of PowerWash Simulator is required to play).
The year is young, but 2025 is already shaping up to be a big year for excellent video games. An increasing list of big games is set to release this year for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. In March, we’ll see new entries in franchises like Assassin’s Creed, WWE 2K, MLB The Show, and many more. Below, you’ll find release dates for all the biggest games and expansions that have been announced for the rest of the year and beyond. Let’s get right down to it.
If you’re someone who likes to preorder your games, you can click the links on the platform of your choice to make sure it arrives on launch day.
March 2025 – Video Game Release Dates
March finallly sees the release of the often-delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the installment that finally delivers what fans have been pining for for over a decade: an ancient Japan setting. Too bad Ghost of Tsushima got there first, but this game still looks awesome. Also out this month is a remaster of the JRPG Xenoblade Chronicles X, plus MLB The Show 25, remasters of the first two Suikodens, Split Fiction, and more.
Age of Mythology: Retold – March 4 – (PS5)
Carmen Sandiego – March 4 – (PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC)
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 (long inhale) Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, and the social network formerly known as Twitter.
The developers of workplace comedy Say No! More and anti-establishment roguelike Reignbreaker are closing down, and the news comes just two weeks before their final punky action game is due to come out. Studio Fizbin has been struck by ongoing cuts at their parent company Thunderful, they say, and despite pitching follow-up projects to work on after Reignbreaker’s release, none of those will go ahead. Which means they’ll be winding down at the exact moment you’d hope they’d be celebrating a payoff from years of work.
Nintendo has announced that the French judiciary Court has ruled that DSTORAGE SAS, who operates the sharehoster website ‘1fichier’, is liable for failing to remove or block pirated games from the platform.
Although the Paris Court of Appeals had previously ruled in favour of Nintendo in 2023, this further clarification from the French judiciary Court is considered the final word on the matter, marking “an end to a long lawsuit”.
There comes a time in every cat owner’s life where they must ask themselves: how large would this creature need to be before it attempted to bat me around like a catnip mouse? I suspect the answer is “only as large as it needed to be”, so it’s fortunate that Monster Hunter Wilds‘ Palicoes are apparently bred for helpfulness. Is installing a mod to the action game that makes them tall as humans a form of gene splicing? Don’t worry, hunter. Gene splicing is how nature heals itself.
Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar has announced its acquisition of the Australian developer Video Games Deluxe.
This Sydney-based team, which worked on the upgrades to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition last year, will be renamed Rockstar Australia. The same team has previously worked with Rockstar on the re-releases of L.A. Noire, and L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files.
In what is quickly becoming one of the worst-kept secrets in the biz, a blurred image of what appears to be the key art for the as-yet-unannounced Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 remaster has leaked online (thanks for the heads up, Push Square).
Shared to Twitter by reliable leaker @billbil_kun (who previously correctly called the Super Mario Bros. WonderSwitch OLED bundle, amongst other things), the art shows a skater in purple, assumed to be The Birdman, pulling off an areal trick over what appears to be a Pro Skater 3 + 4 logo.
When Pokemon TCG Pocket first launched, the meta quickly came to be dominated by a very small handful of decks. One of those, centered around Misty and water-type Pokemon, came to be hated early on due to its potential to overpower opponents early on based entirely on how well some coin flips went.
Now, three expansions later, you would think other cards would have swooped in to replace or counter Misty decks. But instead, Pokemon TCG Pocket’s latest expansion just added a new card that makes Misty decks stronger than ever, and a lot of players are kind of over it.
For context, it’s not that Misty decks are necessarily the most powerful in the game. It’s that the luck-based nature of Misty makes losing to them feel very, very bad. Misty is a Supporter card, with the unique ability to allow the user to pick a water-type Pokemon, and flip a coin until they land on tails. They then attach a water-type energy to that Pokemon for every heads they flipped. This could result in a player attaching 0 water-type energy, effectively wasting a deck spot on the card and a supporter card play. Or they could attach 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 energy, or more, if luck is on their side that day. A well-flipped Misty could allow a player to win on turn one in certain situations, before the opponent even has a chance to make a move. Or, in more common scenarios, the user gets enough bonus energy to bring extremely powerful cards online before their opponent can build a meaningful defense.
All that’s fine and dandy, but what’s made Misty worse are the numerous cards in subsequent expansions that have made it even more powerful. Mythical Island added Vaporean, which has an ability allowing players to essentially move all that bonus energy freely around between their water-types. Space-Time Smackdown brought Manaphy in, which adds even more water energy to the board. Both expansions saw new, powerful water-type Pokemon that can make use of that energy, such as Palkia ex and Gyarados ex. As a result, water decks have been at the top of the meta consistently for multiple expansions in a row.
And now, with Triumphant Light, there’s another card out there making Misty decks even more hellish: Irida. Irida, like Misty, is a Supporter card, but its effect is that it can heal 40 damage from each Pokemon that has any water-type energy attached. Up to this point, grass-type decks have been the healing experts. But with Irida, water-type decks can make significant comebacks as long as they’ve collected and spread out enough energy…and between Misty, Manaphy, and Vaporeon, they’re very likely to do so.
For what it’s worth, some Pokemon TCG experts are offering a pretty logical explanation for Irida. In TCG Pocket, decks are limited to 20 cards That means if you want to add something like Irida, you need to take something else out. Water decks are simply swimming in good cards – at a certain point, players must weigh whether or not it’s actually worth removing Misty for a card like Irida. Some players are speculating that developer DeNA added Irida in an effort to crowd Misty out and force players to make tough choices about which Supporters to include. But that doesn’t mean plenty of wise deckbuilders haven’t found ways to include both.
As the player above points out, Pokemon TCG Pocket is gearing up for a regularly-scheduled event, where rewards will be doled out for going on win streaks in the game’s online competitive mode. The best reward, a gold profile badge, will be given out for winning five matches in a row. This is surprisingly difficult to do, and even moreso when many decks you’ll be facing can sweep you away within the first few turns if they flip coins correctly, and have backups like Irida to save them even if the flips go bad for them.
Expect to see a lot of water decks during this event and for a long time to come. In fact, at this point, it may just be worth playing one yourself if you’re not already.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
