Alright, team, this is a great knife trick of eight-bit video gaming: The hardest stage in Battletoads, blindfolded. Battletoads has an outsize reputation for old-school bad-assery, not only for regular shlubs like you and me, but also for speedrunnersl. At Awesome Games Done Quick this afternoon, showcase performer Piotr Delgado Kuseilczuk, aka “The Mexican Runner,” whipped Battletoads in a warpless, any-percent run in 29:04. Because that segment beat its donation goal, Kuseilczuk came back to

If you’ve never read a Black Panther comic before, Rise of the Black Panther is the one you should be reading now. When it was announced last fall, Rise was billed as a story about the early days of T’Challa, the latest man to wear the mantle of the Black Panther. It would be a sort of prequel for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bestselling Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet. In less than 30 pages, Rise of the Black Panther #1 begins with Captain America and ends with the moment T’Challa came into his inh

If the company’s official channels were all we had to go on, we might never know that the original Phantasy Star debuted for Mark III/Master System back in December 1987. The resultant hand-wringing among fans over PSO2’s failure to expand its virtual borders beyond Asia ultimately serves to highlight the need for a proper Phantasy Star follow-up. Not unlike Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden games, Phantasy Star seemed to take its primary narrative cues from manga and anime. In many ways, the Phantasy Star g

VRChat Inc.’s open letter goes over a few of the core problems facing the game’s community right now, ranging from players’ inappropriate behavior to server problems. pic.twitter.com/DtUpMlBERH — Katie Chironis, 2018 Edition ™ (@katiechironis) January 9, 2018Other VRChat users have spoken about just how frustrating and uncomfortable poor player behavior is in-game affects their own experience. VRChat Inc. is working on a better moderation system, according to the open letter. The VRChat team att

YouTube is beginning to punish Logan Paul in the wake of controversy. The company announced today that it will not move forward with a planned YouTube Red movie that Paul was supposed to star in. The Thinning: New World Order was supposed to be the sequel to Paul’s 2016 YouTube Red movie, The Thinning. On Jan. 9, more than a week after Paul uploaded the video, YouTube released a statement condemning it, writing that it was looking into “further consequences” for Paul. Following backlash over a v

There’s a great piece of sleuthing and historical recreation over at The Videogame History Foundation, where Kate Willaert chronicles her attempt to track down the first video game commercial. It’s a clip from 1972 TV gameshow What’s My Line?, in which the Magnavox Odyssey makes an appearance. Given that Odyssey was the first commercial games console, this must be one of the first video game appearances on TV. He’s playing a tennis game on Odyssey, on a TV screen that the panelists cannot see. I

I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people over the course of my career, [but he] ended up answering pretty much every question with the greatest detail possible.”The Toys That Made Us: Star Wars Star Wars toys forever changed the way we play! Check out the opening of our Star Wars episode, streaming now on Netflix! “Todd McFarlane is doing Star Trek toys now,” Volk-Weiss said, “But before that, there was Playmates. With Star Trek, you literally had failure after failure. The original Star

I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people over the course of my career, [but he] ended up answering pretty much every question with the greatest detail possible.”The Toys That Made Us: Star Wars Star Wars toys forever changed the way we play! Check out the opening of our Star Wars episode, streaming now on Netflix! “Todd McFarlane is doing Star Trek toys now,” Volk-Weiss said, “But before that, there was Playmates. With Star Trek, you literally had failure after failure. The original Star

Let’s dig inSpeculation about an alternate Snyder cut of Justice League started mid-November, just two days after the movie was released. Mata suggested that if Emmerich was telling the truth, the final Justice League result would be much different. Mata’s petition caught the attention of other Snyder believers, who started collecting more evidence supporting the Snyder cut theory. There has been a lot of debate over the existence of a viable “Snyder cut” of Justice League. Warner Bros. had no c

Let’s dig inSpeculation about an alternate Snyder cut of Justice League started mid-November, just two days after the movie was released. Mata suggested that if Emmerich was telling the truth, the final Justice League result would be much different. Mata’s petition caught the attention of other Snyder believers, who started collecting more evidence supporting the Snyder cut theory. There has been a lot of debate over the existence of a viable “Snyder cut” of Justice League. Warner Bros. had no c

Called Total War: Three Kingdoms, the epic strategy series will simulate the battlefields of ancient China for the first time. The Total War series blends pausable real-time combat with grand strategy. This is the second entry in the Total War franchise scheduled for release in 2018. Total War: Thrones of Britannia is part of an ongoing initiative to create spin-offs of the franchise centered around key historical events. The game is billed as a “historical strategy game,” so expect a healthy do

Niantic will soon discontinue Pokémon Go support for iPhones that aren’t compatible with iOS 11, the latest version of the smartphone’s operating system. The developer published a note to its Pokémon Go blog on Jan. 9 to give iPhone users a heads up. In an upcoming update to Pokémon GO, we will end support for Apple devices not capable of upgrading to iOS 11, such as iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c models. The good news is that, if you have a phone that can upgrade to iOS 11, but hasn’t, you’re still in

Niantic will soon discontinue Pokémon Go support for iPhones that aren’t compatible with iOS 11, the latest version of the smartphone’s operating system. The developer published a note to its Pokémon Go blog on Jan. 9 to give iPhone users a heads up. In an upcoming update to Pokémon GO, we will end support for Apple devices not capable of upgrading to iOS 11, such as iPhone 5 and iPhone 5c models. The good news is that, if you have a phone that can upgrade to iOS 11, but hasn’t, you’re still in

Resident Evil 7 biohazard starred in a late-night horror block during Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 Tuesday night, and if you didn’t stay up to watch, you missed out on some classic moments. [Warning: There are Resident Evil 7 spoilers in the videos, so be advised before watching.] One moment in particular is winning attention: when Carcinogen and his similarly hilarious couch-bound co-pilots get to one of Resident Evil 7’s creepiest moments. Carcinogen’s played through Resident Evil 7 several t

Resident Evil 7 biohazard starred in a late-night horror block during Awesome Games Done Quick 2018 Tuesday night, and if you didn’t stay up to watch, you missed out on some classic moments. [Warning: There are Resident Evil 7 spoilers in the videos, so be advised before watching.] One moment in particular is winning attention: when Carcinogen and his similarly hilarious couch-bound co-pilots get to one of Resident Evil 7’s creepiest moments. Carcinogen’s played through Resident Evil 7 several t

The channel violated our community guidelines, we acted accordingly, and we are looking at further consequences. This point hasn’t gone unnoticed by the YouTube community, which called out the company’s lack of accountability. In the case of Logan Paul, because YouTube deemed his video to be in violation of community guidelines, he should have received a strike against his channel. YouTube didn’t “act accordingly” — it didn’t act at all — but the company will never admit to it. Our Community Gui

The channel violated our community guidelines, we acted accordingly, and we are looking at further consequences. This point hasn’t gone unnoticed by the YouTube community, which called out the company’s lack of accountability. In the case of Logan Paul, because YouTube deemed his video to be in violation of community guidelines, he should have received a strike against his channel. YouTube didn’t “act accordingly” — it didn’t act at all — but the company will never admit to it. Our Community Gui

I had stopped playing video games around the time they lost their joysticks. The big difference is easy to spot, so let’s put that first: BioShock Infinite is beautifully made, with details that will delight anyone willing to slow down enough to unpack them. I confess: I took great satisfaction in playing Bioshock Infinite’s opening chapters shortly after the protests and counter-protests in Charlottesville, Va. Rather than establish a clear battle against the forces of white nationalism, BioSho

Breath of the Wild did something no Zelda game had ever really done before. Polygon asked some of our favorite game developers and writers to reflect on the games we played in 2017. Breath of the Wild mixes timeless Zelda systems and combat with Zen-like wanderlust. I’ve never been lucky enough to meet Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, Koji Kondo or any of their other Zelda design colleagues. Now imagine watching Zelda grow and evolve into arguably the most beloved game franchise of all time.

The Black Panther hype is real, and now there are numbers to prove it. Movie ticket retailer Fandango is reporting that Black Panther holds the record for most pre-sale tickets sold for a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. “Black Panther is riding an incredible wave of momentum right now,” Davis said in the release. pic.twitter.com/JL1c28AgWm — ErikDavis (@ErikDavis) January 10, 2018While pre-sale tickets don’t always translate to box office success, it is a good indicator of the anticipation leve