Hey there, GBAtemp! How's your week been? Well, it's definitely about to get better, because it's time for some news! This edition will be covering game news until November 1, and game releases up to November 15. Hope you enjoy!

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Gaming Industry

SAG-AFTRA Actively on Strike​

On October 18, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists broadcast that they would be going on strike, should their demands not be met. As of October 21 the SAG-AFTRA is now on active strike against numerous prominent video game companies. You can see a list of the companies and specific games that the union is striking against HERE. Many notable actors and actresses are advocating for better pay and treatment in the workforce, though it's worth mentioning that less than 25% of those in voicework are signed onto the SAG-AFTRA union, and therefore, most in the voiceover industry are unaffected.

All covered services must be withheld, including, but not limited to: voice acting; motion or performance capture work; background work; principal on camera work (including singing, dancing and performing stunts); authorizing the use of your voice or of a sound-a-like voice in a videogame; consenting to the reuse of prior work into a struck game; performing on a trailer for a struck game and performing on “downloadable content (DLC)” or other ancillary content connected to a struck game. Please consult sagaftra.org/interactive for the most up to date list of struck employers. The following is the current list of struck employers:
• Activision Productions, Inc.
• Blindlight, LLC
• Corps of Discovery Films, Inc.
• Electronic Arts Productions, Inc.
• Disney Character Voices, Inc.
• Formosa Interactive LLC
• Insomniac Games, Inc.
• Interactive Associates, Inc.
• Take 2 Productions, Inc.
• VoiceWorks Productions, Inc.
• WB Games, Inc.

It doesn't look like a resolution will be agreed upon for the time being, but the controversy doesn't end here, as a coalition of the publishers affected by the strike have created a website called http://sagaftravideogames.com/ which claims that the SAG-AFTRA was offered a 9% pay increase, as well as promising better work benefits and compensation for voice stress, but the union turned them down because they demanded to be paid more, based on how well a game sells, and that each performer would be paid 25% of their initial paycheck for each 2 million copies of a game sold. The site also offers a comparison chart viewed HERE, which showcases the differences faced between the publishers and union.

SOURCE

Razer Purchases THX​

Razer, a company known for making gaming accessories and peripheral devices has announced that they will be acquiring THX, an American audio and video company, which was founded by George Lucas in 1983. Razer's CEO, Min-Liang Tan, promises that all staff will remain the same, and management will be free to operate as normal. The CEO also states the following as reason why Razer decided to acquire THX:

The whole entertainment space is converging, we’re seeing music videos shot in 360, movie IP going into games and game IP going into movies. THX is in a curiously unique position of being one of those cult brands in the movie and the sound industries.

It looks like Razer has some Virtual Reality related plans for THX. This buy-out means that all intellectual properties belogining to THX are a subsidiary of Razer now.

SOURCE

Bethesda Will Not Be Providing Early Review Copies to Anyone, Anymore
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Following in DOOM's footsteps, Bethesda will now provide gaming publications with review copies only a day before release. For those that read reviews in order to justify a purchase or pre-order and think this will negatively affect their sales, Bethesda thinks otherwise. They believe that making an informed purchase is important, but that having media and gamers alike experiencing their games at the same time is even more important to them.

With the upcoming launches of Skyrim Special Edition and Dishonored 2, we will continue our policy of sending media review copies one day before release. While we will continue to work with media, streamers, and YouTubers to support their coverage – both before and after release – we want everyone, including those in the media, to experience our games at the same time

SOURCE

Nintendo's Profits Raise by 160%, But Not Completely Because of Video Games
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Nintendo is set to report an increase in profits by 160% (to 290 million USD) compared to last year. However, this is not entirely due to game sales. This fiscal year, Nintendo sold off most of their stock (661 million USD) in the Seattle Mariners baseball team, making nearly ten times the amount that they initially invested in 2004.

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SOURCE

Assorted News

PS4 Getting Two Third Party Licensed "Pro" Controllers
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Sony has licensed two brands, Razer and Nacon, to make some PS4 "official pro" controllers. The Razer Raiju is more of a standard DualShock style, with the symmetrical button and analogue placement, but includes two extra bumpers and two detachable triggers, with stop switches and a 3.5mm headphone jack port. The Nacon Revolution is styled like the Xbox 360 controller, and offers 46 degree amplitude sticks which supposedly have much better accuracy than normal controllers, as well as 4 shortcut buttons and an 8-way D-Pad. Both controllers are marketed towards the e-Sports crowd, and will be hitting stores this Christmas season.

SOURCE

Turtle Rock Studios Officially Stops Work on Evolve: Stage 2
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After a less-than-stellar launch, developer Turtle Rock attempted to rework Evolve into a free-to-play game, and added numerous gameplay changes that were based on player feedback. However, publisher 2K Games has announced that Evolve: Stage 2 is officially "complete" at this time, and will not be receiving any more updates. According to the press release, this is partially due to Turtle Rock and 2K's contract expiring. The PC servers for the game will remain open for the time being, as 2K takes the Evolve franchise "in-house" to see if it's worth porting to home consoles.

SOURCE

Lime Green New Nintendo 3DS XL released in North America
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Nintendo of North America has partnered up with Amazon to release a limited edition Lime Green N3DSXL system. The console comes with Super Mario World pre-installed and retails for the usual price of $199.99. The stock firmware ships with 11.0.0.33U.

SOURCE

Deep Silver bringing Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse and 7th Dragon to Europe
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SEGA and Deep Silver's new publishing deal will see both Shin Megami Tensei IV:A and 7th Dragon Code VFD to European countries on December 2, 2016. This is much less of a turnaround time compared to year and a half it took to get Shin Megami Tensei IV to Europe in 2014.

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Source: GBAtemp Press Inbox

Japan Gets Some Re:Zero Nintendo 3DS Themes

Though the popular anime Re:Zero - Starting Life In Another World has no connections to the Nintendo 3DS, Japan has gotten two official themes on the 3DS e-Shop. Both retail for 200 yen apiece.​

NVIDIA Reveals the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti​

Nvidia is set to release two budget graphics cards sometime before the end of this year. The GTX 1050 will cost $109, while the 1050 Ti will be $139. Both cards promise 1080p/60fps for titles like Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite, and Witcher 3, though Nvidia doesn't specify the graphical detail settings.

1050 Ti 1050
GPU Architecture Pascal Pascal
CUDA® Cores 768 640
Frame Buffer 4 GB GDDR5 2 GB GDDR5
Memory Speed 7 Gbps 7 Gbps
Boost Clock Relative 1.3x 1.3x

SOURCE

Fan Projects

Sonic Utopia: Another 3D Sonic Fan Game


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A small team of fans made up of Murasaki, The Great Lange, Tpot, and Pixy, have created a fan game, titled Sonic Utopia. The game will be making an appearance at SAGE 2016, and there's a playable build, found HERE. It's still in a very early state, though it looks impressive. It's 3D open-world styled, but has gameplay elements from classic 2D Sonic.

Sonic Utopia is an experiment that not only tries to expand on Sonic gameplay in an intuitive way in 3D, but also aims to capture the best of Sonic's style and tie it together in a cohesive experience. Nearly everything in this demo, from art to sound to the gameplay engine, was made from scratch.

Doom 2 Modder Spends 300 hours to create a 3 hour level


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A Doom modder by the name of Ben Mansell has spent hundreds of hours in order to make a level for Doom 2. Called Foursite 4-in-1, his level will take most players about 3 hours to complete. As the name suggests, there are four stages linked together by a hub room, and each stage has a boss to defeat. According to an interview with Mansell by Eurogamer, he tried to be as creative as possible with his level design, utilizing puzzles that aren't used much in modern DOOM games.

It was very much a hobby for me, a few hours a week over the last year or so, taking around 300 hours total. I've always wanted to do something creative, to make something other people can enjoy, and I guess it seemed like a Doom map was my best shot at making something decent!

English Translation Patch for Saturn Version of Hideo Kojima's Policenauts completed
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Policenauts is a video game created by Hideo Kojima (Of MGS fame), released on the Playstation. That version received a full english fan translation, but there was a definitive Sega Saturn version that came out after the Playstation's, with better graphics and more content. Loyal fans have finally finished work on translating the best version of the game.

Translation Patch

Modding Team Attempts to Bring Oblivion into Skyrim's Engine


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For over a year now, a group of dedicated modders have been trying to bring The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion into Skyrim, in order to improve the game. They plan to import all of Oblivion's story and quests, including DLCs. There's no ETA on when this massive import project will be completed, but the mod is at version 0.2, and is making leaps of progress. According to the team, they also plan to make it available for Skyrim: Special Edition.

Niche Game Announcements

Indiebox and Gamestop Partnering to Release Physical Indie Games
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Indiebox is known for crafting physical copies of popular digital-only indie titles, and now, GameStop seems to have taken notice, as the two will be partnering up to release 10 indie games in a "GameTrust" collection. Each box will contain a DRM-free disc version of the game, a steelbook, an artbook, a soundtrack, and a Steam-key. The ten titles are as follows. (Each game will retail for $19.99)

• Nuclear Throne
• Rogue Legacy
• Axiom Verge
• Guacamelee!
• Punch Club
• Jotun
• Awesomenauts
• Chariot
• Stories: Path of Destinies
• Thomas Was Alone

SOURCE

The Silver Case: Remastered is Coming to PS4 in 2017
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The Silver Case, a visual novel directed by Goichi Suda (known for Lolipop Chainsaw and No More Heroes) released originally for Playstation in 1999 is getting an HD remaster on PS4 sometime next year. The remaster is already available on PC, but publisher NIS America will be releasing the game both physically and digitally on Playstation 4.

SOURCE

Xanadu Next to Release on Nov 3​

XSEED's latest localization of a Falcom game, Xanadu Next, will be coming west on November 3 for PC. The game initially launched on PC and N-Gage in 2005 for Japan, and is only now getting an official English translation, though a fan translation has existed for a short while now.

SOURCE

Atelier Shallie Plus Heading West in January
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Atelier Shallie Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea will be heading to the Playstation Vita in January of next year, according to publisher Koei Tecmo. The game will be getting both a physical and digital release, and NIS America is offering a limited edition.

SOURCE

PS+ and Games With Gold for November

Xbox's Games With Gold offers up 4 titles this month; Super Dungeon Bros (XB1), Murdered: Soul Suspect (XB1), The Secret of Monkey Island (360), and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon (360). All Xbox 360 games that come with Games With Gold are backwards compatible for the Xbox One.

SOURCE

PlayStation Plus has Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4), The Deadly Tower of Monsters (PS4), Dirt 3 (PS3), Costume Quest 2, (PS3), Letter Quest Remastered (PSV/4) Pumped BMX+ (PSV/3/4)

SOURCE

Emulation and Hacking Progress

These three emulators have come a long way since their initial developments. Let's check out how far each of them have gotten! Check the spoiler tag to see progress on PS3, 360, and Wii U emulators.

Spoiler

RPCS3 - Vulkan API, Catherine Emulation Test


Cemu 1.6.2 - Yoshi's Wooly World


Xenia Emulator - Dead Space 3

Yellow8 Releases DSiWare Installer​

This is a 3DS homebrew application for installing DSiWare savedata exploits, for DSiWare titles which you already have installed. This is intended as a .3dsx which requires access to SVCs which are normally not accessible(arm11kernelhax/"cfw" required). This application itself does not use any exploits during installation that could be fixed.

This does NOT let you downgrade/install CFW on your 11.0+ 3DS. This has no use at the time of writing, but it will become very useful when/if a 11.0+ Kernal Exploit gets released.

SOURCE

Gameplay and Trailers

Sonic Mania Tails and Knuckles Gameplay


Root Letter Launch Trailer


Monster Hunter XX Japanese Announcement Trailer


Persona 5 Ann Trailer


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Release Calendar

November 1, 2016​

Owlboy (PC)
Bullet Soul: Infinite Burst (360)
Blazblue: Central Fiction (PS4, PS3)
Earth's Dawn (PS4, XBO, PC)
Super Dungeon Bros. (PS4, XBO, PC)
SteamWorld Collection (PS4, Wii U)

November 3, 2016​

Xanadu Next (PC)

November 4, 2016​

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered (PS4, XBO, PC)
Football Manager 2017 (PC)
Mario Party: Star Rush (3DS)

November 8, 2016​

Shantae: Half Genie Hero (PS4, PC, XBO, Wii U)
Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (PS4, PSV)
Harvest Moon: Skytree Village (3DS)
Robinson : The Journey (PS:VR)

November 10, 2016​

Playstation 4 Pro System
Tyranny (PC)

November 11 2016​

Dishonored 2 (PS4, XBO, PC)
Nintendo NES Mini

November 15, 2016​

The Walking Dead: Season 3, Episode 1 (PS4, XBO, PC, 360, PS3, iOS, Android, PSV, Mac, Linux)
Ittle Dew 2 (PS4, XBO, PC)
Watch_Dogs 2 (PS4, PC, XBO)
Assassins Creed: The Ezio HD Collection (PS4, XBO)
Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel European Release (PS3, PSV)

 

[Justinde75]

Wow, that must have been alot of work. Great job on the post, was crazy fun to read!
There are alot of things to look forward to this month. Hope FF15 doesnt get delayed again lol

 

[Greymane]

Must have all the EMULATORS!!!!!!!
also will finally be able to get smt 4 a legit so yay.

 

[Meteor7]

I saw KH 2.8 on the list of games currently being struck against. (Is that the proper past tense for this form of "to strike"?) I wonder what this'll mean for the game's release schedule. If something as big as a KH title gets delayed by this controversy, there's no doubt it'll get many more people involved with their opinions, which could very well affect the whole dynamic of the situation.

Also, Bethesda is full of horse crap; they're only causing harm when they limit a reviewer's time playing a game. There's no reason they, or anyone else, would give a second glance at a few people playing the game a week earlier than others. By giving reviewers just 24 hours to both fully complete a game as well as construct a critical analysis, they're making it so that corners will need to be cut somewhere. Some games simply cannot be completed, even 1/3 of the way, in 24 hours, even if every single hour was spent gaming, and that's not even leaving a second for the actual review. Forcing reviewers into a 24 hour labor marathon will only result in a more bare-bones and rushed analysis, a skewed perspective, and an inhumanely exhausted reviewer. It only makes things more difficult for all involved, and for what? So some small percentage of gamers are spared the sin of having played a game before others? And what about the people who decide to wait a month before buying a game, are they going against Bethesda's "noble" philosophy as well? What an absolute shit-show. Bethesda is just trying to put the squeeze on pre-release reviewers; maybe in an effort to hide the flaws in their games' minutia or maybe it's just to work them so ragged that they haven't the wherewithal to critique a game beyond "Yeah, it's pretty good. I like the pretty graphics. 8/10" Whatever their game, it's a most classic example of a corporate dick move, and the thin veil of an excuse they presented is just an example of how stupid they think everyone else is.

Anyway, thanks for this column, mate. It's always a good read!

 

[WiiUBricker]

I like this format. Keep up the good work.

 

[nxwing]

Looks like 1050 Ti it is for me then.

√Letter also looks really promising. Will look at reviews and may buy it.

 

[migles]

this is why gbatemp is worth millions dollars, we got cool threads and stuff like this

 

[TobiasAmaranth]

Japan Gets Some Re:Zero Nintendo 3DS Themes

Though the popular anime Re:Zero - Starting Life In Another World has no connections to the Nintendo 3DS, Japan has gotten two official themes on the 3DS e-Shop. Both retail for 200 yen apiece.

Anyone got a link? Haha. I actually really liked that series, and my current theme has been pretty meh to me. :3

 

[leon315]

NEWz, NEWz, who's the best Reporter?
TC is!

 

[BORTZ]

I would buy a physical copy of Axiom Verge. I want to support that dev with everything I have.

Good work Chary.

 

[RevPokemon]

Great Work @Chary ! I really love these as they are very well written and pretty informative. Anyway I would love to get that special N3DS but I think I will wait until later where I can get one pretty cheap hopefully.

 

[Ethevion]

Sonic Mania makes my peepee tingle

 

[Justin14p]

Doom 2 Modder Spends 300 hours to create a 3 hour level

*Doom intensifies*

 

[Lumstar]

Bullet Soul Infinite Burst had a quiet digital USA 360 release today.
https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/...te-Burst/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802465607f8

 

[RustInPeace]

*Doom intensifies*

Sonic Mania makes my peepee tingle

I almost cried watching the trailer for that, such a huge surge of nostalgia hit me watching the trailer. I really can't wait to play that game. I played the crap out of Sonic 1 and 2 so seeing Sonic Mania as it appears to me makes me so happy. I can't say any other Sonic game after the Genesis era gave me such a feeling.

Anyways this is a great column, please keep doing this.

 

[Sakitoshi]

Bullet Soul Infinite Burst had a quiet digital USA 360 release today.
https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/...te-Burst/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802465607f8

It is really bad though, there is nothing to dodge as the bullet disappear before reaching you.

Japan Gets Some Re:Zero Nintendo 3DS Themes

Though the popular anime Re:Zero - Starting Life In Another World has no connections to the Nintendo 3DS, Japan has gotten two official themes on the 3DS e-Shop. Both retail for 200 yen apiece.

Entry-level waifu themes?? I better go and make some real waifu themes to keep up.

I like this centered way of delivering news. Keep up the good work!!

 

[Ethevion]

I almost cried watching the trailer for that, such a huge surge of nostalgia hit me watching the trailer. I really can't wait to play that game. I played the crap out of Sonic 1 and 2 so seeing Sonic Mania as it appears to me makes me so happy. I can't say any other Sonic game after the Genesis era gave me such a feeling.

Anyways this is a great column, please keep doing this.

Sonic 1, 2, and 3 & Knuckles are by far my favorite games. And to be fair, 4 was pretty good too, but Mania really hits home with me.

 

[Steena]

Damn, looks like it'd be a huge effort if you intend to keep this going on a regular schedule
Good job
If I may suggest something to maximize the convenience of reading selective things/topics, maybe add a hypertext index with the titles at the top that will scroll down to the relevant snippets (if it's even possible to do)

 

[Chary]

Damn, looks like it'd be a huge effort if you intend to keep this going on a regular schedule
Good job
If I may suggest something to maximize the convenience of reading selective things/topics, maybe add a hypertext index with the titles at the top that will scroll down to the relevant snippets (if it's even possible to do)

That's a cool idea, I'll look into that, thanks.

Bullet Soul Infinite Burst had a quiet digital USA 360 release today.
https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/...te-Burst/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802465607f8

Added, thank you!

this is why gbatemp is worth millions dollars, we got cool threads and stuff like this

<3

I almost cried watching the trailer for that, such a huge surge of nostalgia hit me watching the trailer. I really can't wait to play that game. I played the crap out of Sonic 1 and 2 so seeing Sonic Mania as it appears to me makes me so happy. I can't say any other Sonic game after the Genesis era gave me such a feeling.

They couldn't have hired a better guy to make the game. I usually try to refrain from getting hyped for a game, but I know this will be good for sure, with the talent they're using. Money's already down for the collector's edition. I can't wait.

 

[Mnecraft368]

November 8, 2016
Shantae: Half Genie Hero (PS4, PC, XBO, Wii U)
Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization (PS4, PSV)
Harvest Moon: Skytree Village (3DS)
Robinson : The Journey (PS:VR)

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0_0
*claps*​