Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. To read the last entry, check out It Is Impossible To Fight Through All of These Men, But Shōgun’s Mariko Managed It Anyway.

This column contains detailed spoilers of Dead Boy Detectives, a spinoff of The Sandman.

The Sandman casts a large shadow, which makes creating a spinoff in the same universe one heck of a tall order. Where the story of Morpheus and his Endless siblings is larger than life, many of the individual stories that take place in the graphic novels are more contained. Things like tone, aesthetic, character motivations, and more should all be their own thing.

If you’ve followed the Dead Boy Detectives saga, you know that the show was first meant to be over at (HBO) Max as a spinoff of Doom Patrol. However, after recasting the two leads and setting up a writing and production team, the series was eventually sold to Netflix. Now, if you follow my column regularly, you know that I believe that Dead Boy Detectives always needed to be at Netflix and connecting to The Sandman universe (as it does in the comics, though Doom Patrol crossovers have happened in previous runs). But, doing so meant that showrunners Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz had some pretty Endless shoes to fill in the eyes of a lot of fans. So, how did they do it?

By not trying to fill those shoes at all.

While the crossover aspect is still apparent with Kirby Howell Baptiste’s Death in the pilot episode and her presence looming large over Edwin (George Rexstrew) and Charles (Jayden Revri) throughout the season, and though Donna Preston’s Despair makes an appearance in hell, Schwartz and Yockey were free to play in their own sandbox and really make Dead Boy Detectives their own. And, If you’re wondering if they wanted to see the inclusion of more of The Endless, the answer is no!

“Death and Despair is who we asked for,” Yockey answers after I ask whether or not they had requested more characters and been declined. “It would be fun to drag all of those Sandman characters over, and certainly it would be noisy and get a lot of attention, but that really isn't what Beth [Schwartz] and I are super interested in.”

Obviously, when the show was first created, Yockey and Schwartz didn’t know that they’d have access to these characters at all. Warner Bros. Discovery may have a hand in producing The Sandman, Doom Patrol, and Dead Boy Detectives, but what happens on Netflix and what happens on Max are completely different ball games.

“We designed the show so that it could exist within the Sandman universe without stepping on too many toes,” Yockey notes. “And then when we found out we were going to be on Netflix, we were like, ‘Oh.’ Then Netflix was like, ‘Hey, we love what you're doing, but wouldn't it be cool to have some crossovers in Easter eggs?’ And we were like, ‘What a great idea.’ And so we asked for those two characters for very specific reasons in the storytelling for our boys.”

Of course, with Despair chilling out in hell, I had to ask about head honcho, Lucifer, and Gwendoline Christie’s larger-than-life absence. But, in keeping the spirit of Being Its Own Thing™, Yockey and Schwartz ultimately made the right decision to showcase how huge hell is rather than slip in an additional cameo.

“We wanted to do our own version of hell,” Schwartz explains. “And we obviously mentioned Lucifer, but like Steve said, we're exploring the world of Dead Boys and how Dead Boys exist alongside Sandman. And further we go forward if we are lucky to have future seasons, we'll be able to open up that world a little more.”

Obviously it would have been great fun to see Lucifer before we head into the next season of The Sandman, but ultimately young Edwin never would have escaped hell again had that been the case. If Tom Sturridge’s Morpheus struggles to best Lucifer, it’s unlikely that a mere ghost with fewer than 100 years under his belt is going to manage to get out of their grasp.

With The Sandman and Dead Boy Detectives existing in tandem, there’s one final critical story reason that required the latter to be 100% its own thing outside of the occasional cameo: the Seasons of Mist story hasn’t happened in The Sandman just yet. And, with The Sandman remaining relatively faithful to the graphic novels, that limits just how much Charles and Edwin can play with Sandman characters — at least for now. It also happens to be the reason for the slight tweak in their backstory.

“To Alan and Neil and Beth and I, the shows are happening in tandem,” explains Yockey. “Because they're happening at the same time and they haven't gotten to the Seasons of Mist storyline in the Sandman yet, we can't do anything that would allude to that. So that's why the slight tweak to the boys' backstories with Edwin escaping hell instead of being released from hell.”

Story justifications matter a great deal but, for me, it was always important that Dead Boy Detectives had its own vibes both as an ardent Sandman fan and as a critic. Aging up the boys and playing in a contemporary world means that they can play around in ways a 1:1 adaptation never could. Plus, playing more in the human world and learning the possibilities that exist outside of the Endless’ realm gives us an exciting look at the expansion of The Sandman universe on TV.

25 years ago, Nintendo changed forever when Mario and Pikachu beat the snot out of each other for the first time. And it wasn’t some imaginative playground game or notebook scribbles, it was a real, official, Nintendo-sanctioned clobbering! Today marks the 25th anniversary of Super Smash Bros. hitting North America on Nintendo 64, launching the franchise that would eventually culminate in the best-selling fighting game of all time. So on Smash’s birthday, let’s celebrate gaming’s biggest crossover, and speculate about where the franchise could possibly go next after the literally “ultimate” last entry.

It still blows my mind that Nintendo approved a game where its most recognizable, family-friendly faces get punched by other company icons, especially considering that Smash 64’s prototype was called Dragon King: The Fighting Game, featuring no Nintendo characters at all. But when series creator Masahiro Sakurai thought the game would be more successful with Nintendo characters, the company surprisingly agreed. The uber-protective Nintendo has a cute explanation for how its all-stars can fight, as Smash 64’s opening cutscene shows plush toys of Mario, DK, and Samus coming to life in a child’s playroom. Super Smash Bros. Melee replaced the plush toys with trophies, which eventually led to Smash for Wii U and 3DS’ amiibo, which led to hundreds of dollars leaving my bank account. But however Nintendo needs to justify it, it’s just awesome the idea got the green light.

I anxiously awaited a green light of my own to get my start with Smash Bros. One of my earliest vivid memories comes from when I was five years old, sitting in a Target parking lot with my mom and sister. I had my heart set on getting Super Smash Bros. Melee for GameCube, but there was a catch: Melee was rated T for Teen, and my kindergarten-age self was a long way away from my teenage years. My mom called my dad to see if he thought it was okay for me to play a T-rated game, and he luckily approved. So thanks, Mom and Dad, because that decision introduced me to one of my favorite series, one that I’m still in love with over 20 years later.

Looking back now, Smash 64’s humble roster of 12 fighters seems miniscule in comparison to modern entries, but as a kid I still remember how incredible it was to play a game with Pikachu, Mario, and Link all in the same place. It felt impossible, and with each new entry, Sakurai and Co. continued to make miracles happen. Melee expanded the lineup significantly, over doubling the number of characters and adding princesses like Peach and Zelda and villains like Bowser and Ganondorf. There were also some great off-the-wall choices in Melee, like Mr. Game & Watch, the Ice Climbers, and a couple of mysterious sword fighters from an unknown Japan-exclusive series called Fire Emblem.

As much as I dislike the floaty physics of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, I still really appreciate the Wii entry for all the big swings it took. From its wildly ambitious Subspace Emissary story mode, to its attempt to introduce online play to the franchise, to crazy third-party inclusions like Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog, Brawl followed in Melee’s footsteps establishing that each new Smash entry was going to be bigger and more bombastic than the last. Smash Bros. never rests on its laurels, and it has deservedly become an event whenever a new Smash Bros. hype cycle kicks off.

Thanks to the rise of the Nintendo Direct and social media, the leadup to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS is remembered for extremely hype reveal trailers. Nintendo ramped up the third-party additions with classic gaming icons like Mega Man, Ryu, and Pac-Man, along with the truly unfathomable introduction of Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife. I distinctly remember conversations along the lines of “Where does Smash go from here” starting after Smash 4’s DLC run came to an end, as the roster seemed too big to replicate in a future entry. But of course, we all now know that wasn’t the case.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is one of Nintendo’s crowning achievements. Not only did Ultimate bring every character from franchise history back, but it continued the trend of absolutely wild third-party crossovers. Steve, Banjo & Kazooie, and Sora feel like nothing more than pie-in-the-sky chat forum dreams, but Sakurai and his team at Sora Ltd. and Bandai Namco made them all happen. So now, on Smash’s 25th anniversary, I’m asking the same question we all asked before the Smash team set the bar even higher with Ultimate: What happens next?

Will Sakurai Be Involved?

Every Smash Bros. is Masahiro Sakurai’s last Smash Bros… until the next one. That’s been the pattern for nearly the entire franchise at this point, as it always seems like Sakurai is on his way out the door until Nintendo reels him back in for one more go. But this time, it really seems like it’s worth questioning if Sakurai will continue to lead Smash in the future. And yes, there is a future for Smash. “Ultimate” may be the title of the last entry, but there’s no way Nintendo is going to leave one of its mega franchises on the table with 20 million-plus sales potential. Personally, I don’t think Sakurai is going to be able to help himself the next time Nintendo gives him a call. Last year, the creator said he can’t imagine the series continuing without him.

"The question now is what happens next time?” Sakurai said in a video on his YouTube channel. “I mean whatever comes after Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. One option would be to separate the series from its original creator, but for now, at least, I can't imagine a Smash Bros. title without me. You might think that's a natural stance for someone in my role, but I say so speaking objectively.”

Sakurai added that there’s no one right now who he can see taking the reins and leading the next Smash game, and that he’d like to continue working with Nintendo in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if that phone call has already happened, as Sakurai announced he is ending his short-lived YouTube career later this year, and he squashed rumors of retirement by saying he’s still focused on making games.

Since Sakurai feels there is currently no one prepared to take over the series, I think he will come back for one more entry where he shifts into more of a producer role, so he can take the time to train his replacement during development of the next game. It would be a similar situation to what we’ve seen happen with Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, where longtime directors like Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma slowly transitioned into producer roles. That way, when Sakurai is ready to step away from Smash, he can rest easier knowing his series is in good hands.

Can ‘Everyone Is Here’ Happen Again?

Even Sakurai himself doesn’t think something the size of Ultimate can happen again.

"As for what comes next for the Smash Bros. series, even I'm not sure," Sakurai said. "I feel we truly succeeded in making people happy with this game, but now that Smash Bros. has grown to be monstrous in size, I'd say it's difficult to imagine an increase of this magnitude happening again.

"Every time, we managed to make a game that I had previously thought impossible, so I can't say for certain there won't be another, but I do think it would be difficult to push it any further than we have."

Bringing everyone back for another entry would be even tougher than it was for Ultimate. Besides the sheer number of characters to work on and balance during development, Nintendo would have to get every third-party partner — we’re talking Capcom, Sega, Konami, Square Enix, Microsoft, and even Disney — to sign off on their characters making another Smash appearance. While I don’t doubt that Sakurai and his team could pull it off again, I’m not convinced that’s the route they’d go with a brand-new Smash game.

The one route where I could see “Everyone Is Here” happening again is through a Deluxe port of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Maybe Nintendo would port a game as massive as Smash Ultimate to its next home console, and Sakurai’s team at Bandai Namco could reconvene to make some DLC additions to the roster. It would be a significantly smaller lift for the developers, and Sakurai could take the opportunity to train a new director under much less demanding circumstances than an entirely new Smash Bros. game.

The other route I could see Smash going is to a full reboot of the series. Movesets for Ultimate’s DLC characters were absolutely bonkers, from Hero’s spell menu, to Joker’s Persona, to Terry and Kazuya’s powered-up states, and it started to make characters who have been around since the early days of the series feel simple by comparison. Characters like Mario, Fox, Link, and Samus have barely changed since Smash 64, and it might be time to go back to the drawing board and revamp the movesets for some of Nintendo’s most classic characters. Overhauled movesets for iconic fighters in exchange for a much smaller roster seems like a fair tradeoff to me, and Nintendo would surely grow the roster over time through DLC.

Either way, Nintendo is facing a big challenge for the next Smash Bros. game. This series has always outdone itself, but Ultimate is a very tough game to try and outdo. But if there’s one team I trust to figure out how to make the next entry special, it’s Sakurai and Nintendo, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for this series that always manages to be such a special event.

What do you want to see from the next Smash Bros. game? Let us know in the comments.

Logan Plant is IGN's Database Manager, Playlist Editor, and frequent Super Ninfriendo on Nintendo Voice Chat. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

2014’s The Crew was the first project for developer Ivory Tower, which was founded in Lyon, France, in 2007 and later acquired by Ubisoft in late 2015. While it may have been the debut game for the studio, a number of Ivory Tower’s staff formerly hailed from Lyon’s Eden Games (including Ivory Tower’s three founders) and had previous experience on the first three instalments of the V-Rally series, the PlayStation version of Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, and the trendsetting Test Drive Unlimited. As such, there was a good deal of optimism around The Crew.

While The Crew was a racing game of impressively preposterous proportions – with a map that spanned a condensed version of the entire continental USA – it was admittedly shy of perfect.

Its unprecedented size (an environment so big it took several hours to drive around) took a clear toll on its finer details, and contemporaneous rival racers like Forza Horizon 2 and Driveclub were far more handsome options. Its rubberband AI was regularly exasperating, with low-level opponents still able to rocket past high-level cars they should have no business keeping up with. It also had a surprisingly stingy economy, where you could find yourself at the level cap, out of story missions, and still without sufficient credits to actually buy any of its most-desirable cars.

However, despite this, its staggering size really was something to behold and, thanks to that, it was undeniably brimming with racing opportunities and exploration potential.

Of course, the operative word here is ‘was.’ The Crew was a whole bunch of things. But it’s not any of those things anymore.

Because it’s gone.

Long-time racing gamers are no doubt accustomed to the idea that their favourite racers won’t be available to buy forever. At least for games featuring licensed car models and tracks, there’ll be a wad of signed contracts somewhere that place a time limit on a publisher’s ability to sell them. Even the biggest racing franchises have been victims of these automotive langoliers, munching through the history of the genre and chewing up anything past its expiration date. There are more racing games that you can no longer buy digitally – or new at retail – than I have space here to list.

For the most part, however, you can absolutely still play them. Used copies can still be bought, traded, and stashed forever in your personal collections. Digital owners can still re-download them from the cloud. Right this second I could easily boot up my copy of Project CARS 2, or Forza Horizon 3, or Driver: San Francisco, and play any one of them indefinitely.

Alongside “upcoming server infrastructure”, “licensing constraints” are the other reason cited by Ubisoft for The Crew’s shutdown. What I don’t grasp is what exactly makes The Crew any different to… every other licensed racing game I’ve ever owned. I simply don’t understand why Ubisoft’s inability to continue to sell The Crew also means nobody can play it anymore, either. It’s like Codemasters sending hired goons to my house to confiscate my old copies of Colin McRae. Being delisted from sale is a disappointing but otherwise normal circumstance for racers with expired car licenses, but since when are publishers under obligation to nuke all existing copies of them from existence?

The Crew hasn’t just been delisted, it’s been deactivated. Entirely. That’s a full-price game, with microtransactions and DLC, that no longer functions. Not just the multiplayer and co-op; the single player functionality has been killed too. With The Crew requiring an internet connection to run – even when playing entirely solo against the AI – the moment Ubisoft switched off the servers The Crew was kaput. This is a game that was possible to play alone from beginning to end against the computer, without ever engaging with the multiplayer. Hell, the entire prologue of The Crew couldn’t be done in multiplayer.

We were told that this was going to happen. Ubisoft delisted The Crew from all digital storefronts late last year and confirmed “the game will not be accessible anymore” after March 31, 2024. But the advanced warning doesn’t make this any more palatable.

In July last year, the Video Game History Foundation published a study on the commercial availability of classic video games in the US, discovering that only a dismal 13% of video game history is available in the current marketplace. The remaining 87% is regarded as essentially inaccessible to those who don’t maintain antique hardware, can’t travel to a physical library software archive, or won’t download pirate versions. The Video Game History Foundation describes these games as “critically endangered.”

As it stands, however, The Crew is beyond endangered; it’s extinct.

Always-online games are clearly hugely problematic when it comes to game preservation. I’m not going to pretend for a moment that I know how The Crew works under the hood, but from an external perspective it’s hard not to question why a satisfactory compromise wasn’t available. 2017’s Gran Turismo Sport, for instance, was also an online-only game. Parts of the game could be accessed offline, but you weren’t even able to save your progress. However, when Sony pulled the plug on online services for GT Sport in January this year, developer Polyphony Digital published one final patch for the game that removed this requirement.

This meant that GT Sport’s single-player modes would still be accessible after the servers vanished, and that players would still be able to access the campaign and any previously purchased DLC. Going forward they would also be able to save their progress locally. The arrival of this update bodes well for Gran Turismo 7. After all, GT7 has a similarly rigid (and, admittedly, equally unwelcome) online connection requirement to access most of its content for now. It does, however, seem safe to assume that when GT7 comes to face its own retirement, it’ll probably receive the same treatment. I don’t get the feeling that Polyphony Digital would be content in having an instalment of such a storied series rendered completely unplayable, forever. GT7 players, in this instance, can probably rest easy that all their progress won’t be lost in the ether.

The same really can’t be said for The Crew 2 or The Crew Motorfest players. The erasure of The Crew certainly sets a poor precedent for its sequels, at the very least. Are there now players reconsidering spending any more time (or, importantly, money) on The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest considering history now suggests that, at some point, everything they’ve done will probably be deleted along with the games themselves?

In a baffling twist, multiple players of The Crew have reported finding evidence of an offline mode in The Crew, with potential local save functionality. Digging around in The Crew’s code, hidden menu options that reference options like ‘Play Offline’, ‘Save game’, and ‘Load game’ appear to have been uncovered. However, speculation that this could mean The Crew’s single-player gameplay would survive the server shutdown – much like GT Sport did – has amounted to nothing.

Of course, like an island full of female dinosaurs figuring out how to breed, it does feel probable that a fan project will find a way to bring The Crew back to life in some capacity. Following the shutdown of EA’s underwhelming free-to-play MMO Need for Speed: World back in 2015, enterprising fans were eventually able to resurrect the game in 2017. It remains playable today and, to its credit, EA has made no attempt to intervene over the past seven years.

In contrast, in the wake of The Crew’s shutdown, Ubisoft is actually under further fire for making additional actions that would only hamper any future fan revival. Since the server shutdown, some players are now reporting discovering their digital ownership of The Crew has actually been terminated, removing the ability to even re-download the game files in the event of a mod that makes it playable again. Will that fan fix ever come if a significant part of the potential community for it won’t even be able to retrieve the game software for it? A Need for Speed: World-style second coming no longer feels inevitable in this instance.

The Crew isn’t unique in the driving MMO space. There are other examples of driving MMOs that have gone through server shutdowns and remain playable as single-player experiences. Test Drive Unlimited’s server connection was severed well over a decade ago, and yet I’ve booted that up on several occasions while working at IGN for retro coverage purposes. It’s still playable solo, which is honestly how I played it back in the day.

So was The Crew.

The total decommissioning of The Crew is a serious step back for game preservation. Despite what you or I may think about The Crew overall, it was someone’s first racing game. It was someone’s favourite racing game. It was special to someone, for some reason. And now they can’t ever play it again, regardless of how much time they sunk into it, or how much cash they dropped on DLC.

They don’t have to be okay with it, and nor should we.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. This one contains spoilers for Shōgun. To read the last entry, check out How Lucy MacLean and Her Okey Dokeys Became Fallout’s Secret Weapon.

In chess, a queen sacrifice happens when a player willingly gives up their queen to the opponent. It’s a move that requires expert strategy due to the importance of the chess piece, and one that easily distracts lesser players — especially those with a proclivity for hubris. The move is often overlooked as stupidity in the event of such hubris and, when played right, frequently results in a checkmate against the lesser player.

Of course, in chess the queen is just a piece on a board. In Shōgun, the queen — at least on Toranaga’s side of the board — is Lady Mariko. And she knows exactly what she’s doing. That knowledge, though, is for her and Toranaga alone. Blackthorne and Tadanobu Asano’s Yabushige have no idea that the Lady is the key to their Lord’s plan and that their foes are about to be presented with an unwinnable decision.

au·ton·o·my /ôˈtänəmē/
noun: autonomy

• 1. the right or condition of self-government.
• freedom from external control or influence; independence.
• "economic autonomy is still a long way off for many women"

People often fail to understand what the word “autonomy” means. But in the case of Shōgun, it feels inevitable that the bad faith reading will ultimately be something along the lines of “how can you say that this series celebrates autonomy when everything Mariko did was in service of a man?” The answer there is two-fold.

First, considering the historical connotations behind cultural behavior is pertinent when, and only when, the story is not fantasy or sci-fi based. (Read: the argument that Game of Thrones is “justifiably” violent and terrible to its women because of the time period is not a valid rebuttal when dragons exist.) Shōgun makes the cultural behavior of the era clear: a wife’s life belongs to her husband, and her function is to serve. But characters like Anna Sawai’s Mariko, Fumi Nikaidô’s Ochiba, Yuka Kouri’s Kiku and Yûko Miyamoto’s Gin all transcend that in a multitude of ways, and each character does so differently from the last.

The second part of the answer is, rightfully, informed by the first. Cultural barriers can impact things like beliefs, loyalties and allegiances, but they do not dictate them. Japanese stereotypes — particularly those connected to samurai — often depict the entire culture as a monolith of “honor,” while Shōgun leaves its characters free to be treacherous little weirdos when they see fit. (We see you, Yabushige. We don’t respect you, but we enjoy you anyway!) And the whole root of the series is about where allegiances lie. Ochiba is loyal only to herself and her son, while Mariko chooses loyalty to the church and Hiroyuki Sanada’s Toranaga.

Mariko’s autonomy is only furthered by her abject refusal to die alongside her husband. Shin'nosuke Abe’s Buntaro finally gives his wife what she has begged for in all of their years together: the opportunity to take her own life. Despite the samurai’s fierce loyalty, Buntaro can no longer follow Toranaga after he believes his lord has given up and chosen defeat, but the formerly abusive husband, who has only discovered his love for his wife hidden in the fear of losing her, misunderstands Mariko’s desires.

Ochiba, once Mariko’s closest friend and now ostensibly her enemy, points out that Mariko’s sacrificial gamble is her way of getting back at fate. It may be in service of Lord Toranaga, but the Lady has been preparing for this moment from the second her father married her off to an abusive samurai who couldn’t figure out his own emotions until it was too late. Each faction believes that fate will favor them, but it is only Mariko who is able to move the cruel mistress to her will. Fate isn’t the only intangible force that she twists to her favor, either. The aforementioned cultural behaviors that inform everyone’s (Blackthorne excepted) decisions in Shōgun are wielded as a sword by Mariko when she faces down the entire council, advising them of her plans to take Toranaga’s wives with her back to Edo the following morning. Her demure smile cuts like a knife against Takehiro Hira's Ishido's barely contained rage.

Regardless of which decision Ochiba and her betrothed make, the series’ queen sacrifice ensures that the outcome ultimately benefits Toranaga. If they allow Mariko to perform Seppuku, it will become widely known that the nobles are being held hostage, leading to an uprising. If they allow her to go free, the nobles will stop playing along with the charade and demand their own freedom en masse.

I’m not as enamored as others by the starry-eyed romance between Cosmo Jarvis’ gape-mouthed Blackthorne and Lady Mariko, but the series does, at least, lend some final justification to their love before the penultimate episode’s tragic end. Blackthorne begs Mariko to choose life, if for nothing else, then for him. However, when he realizes that she has made her ultimate decision, he picks up the sword to aid her as her second. He’s a (sometimes justifiably) bumbling loudmouth for much of the show but, when faced with, presumably, the most difficult decision of his life, Blackthorne chose to honor Mariko’s autonomy over his own needs.

In the end, Shōgun’s queen sacrifice ends up more literal than I believe Lord Toranaga had hoped. She was a means to an end, but he also loved and valued her. In a world full of men playing with swords, Toranaga saw that his greatest asset was not a battalion, but the fierce loyalty of a woman who had no question in her faith, allegiance, or value. The series may be about his chess game, but Mariko’s story was hers, and hers alone, even as she laid down her life to try to protect her loved ones. And, in the end, her assasination is the final act of a flailing opponent who has realized that they are on the receiving end of a check mate. Meanwhile, she is simply at peace, and in a way that doesn't damn her in the confines of her Christian faith.

She said it best several episodes ago: “A woman is simply at war.” Finally, after a long and cruel battle, Toda Mariko’s war is over.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. This one contains spoilers for Fallout Season 1. If you’re not caught up yet, go check out the previous entry Dead Boy Detectives Ending Up At Netflix Is Proof That Sometimes Things Work Out.

Earnest characters are hard. They’re hard to write in a way that they don’t become walking contradictions, and they’re hard to perform in a way that feels genuine. Magnify that significantly when you drop said earnest character smack dab in the middle of an apocalypse, and that’ll leave you with Ella Purnell’s Lucy.

Prime Video’s Fallout series is founded on juxtaposition — futuristic but classic; pleasantville surrounded by wastelands; niceties covering atrocities, etc. — but, for me, none of these are more interesting than Lucy MacLean.

A lot of Lucy’s characteristics can be boiled down to naivete, which is neither new nor interesting in and of itself. What makes her such a clever character is that she actually believes what she is saying, and that she continues to fight for it even after entering the hardened, complicated, and deeply messy real world. The Overseers founded their new world in the vaults to cover up the unspeakable act of ending the old one, leaning into niceties and feigned kindness to benefit their totalitarian intentions. But Lucy grew up in the next generation. One that had the opportunity to actually buy into the crap that Vault-Tec was selling without the baggage of being an actual, literal villain.

That logic would lead you to believe that her next-gen counterparts share her ideals, but that’s not quite true either. The running theme among the other occupants of Vault 33 is cowardice. Younger brother Norm (Moises Arias) is deeply inquisitive but hides during the raid and is too afraid to enter the wasteland; ex-lover-and-also-cousin Chet (Dave Register) is happy to flee the complications of Vault 33 despite knowing what the Overseers did to the old Vault 32; the council is made up of Woody (Zach Cherry) and Reg (Rodrigo Luzzi) — both too terrified to stand up for themselves or against Betty (Leslie Uggams), who is actually from Vault 31; and Lucy’s best friend Stephanie (Annabel O’Hagan) is the odd Vault 31 transfer who hasn’t been made Overseer… yet. The transfer to Vault 32 all but guarantees that will shortly become Stephanie’s domain rather than the terrified Woody’s.

And then there’s Lucy. Scared but brave anyway; naive but ready to learn; built on prejudices that she is ready to confront; and ready to grow but unwilling to sacrifice her core beliefs in order to do so. The joyous sex positivity doesn't hurt either!

A huge part of my fascination with Lucy — and similar though more fantastical characters like Steve Rogers, Clark Kent and Kara Danvers — is rooted in my belief that surface-level niceness has no value, but being kind is the most important thing that a person can be. Grand personalities and reputation will never matter more than character, and in a society that puts such strong value on both of the former, the latter is rarely celebrated in the way that it should be.

The thing about me is that I’m a cynical asshole. I’d go the way of Fallout’s Ghoul (Walton Goggins) or The Last of Us’ Frank (Nick Offerman) basically immediately in an apocalypse scenario. Firefly’s Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) line of “I look out for me and mine, that don’t include you ‘less I conjure it does” has served me well in life. While none of those characters – the Ghoul, Frank, or Mal – lend themselves to being kind on the surface, all of them either started out that way or end up doing the right thing in the end. Nicety? Pointless. Character? Critical.

So, when a protagonist ends up being both nice and kind, I can’t help but find myself a little wrapped up in their world. Folks who actually know what “bless your heart” means will catch my drift here.

While Lucy doesn’t have the fantastical elements of the Captain Americas or the Kryptonians of the world, she is immediately crammed into an impossible scenario that challenges every aspect of life that she has ever known. Personality-wise, we see her grow throughout Season 1 as she learns not to trust every wastelander she meets. But, throughout all of those challenges, her integrity remains intact.

She stands up to her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), even though the easiest route would be to simply return to Vault 33 and go back to her perfect, idyllic life. Instead, Lucy chooses to follow the Ghoul to find answers and better understand the world around her.

There’s a moment early on in the season when the Ghoul tells Lucy “I’m you,” insisting the young woman will yet be morphed by the wasteland into a monster. But, so far as Season 1 is concerned, Lucy is still insistent on proving him wrong. Of course, Lucy didn’t lose everything in the way that Cooper Howard did all those years ago, but that’s part of what makes the two’s dynamic so interesting. The monster sees the remnant of the person he once was, and Lucy sees the perceived eventuality that she has to actively choose not to become.

Season 1 of Fallout closes with a ton of intrigue for what’s awaiting our protagonists in New Vegas but, for me, I’m the most engaged with how Lucy’s character will be challenged. So long as the kindness remains intact, I’m along for the ride.

It’s the end of an era for Nintendo fans: Online play for 3DS and Wii U games has officially ended. I adore the 3DS and Wii U libraries, and even though Nintendo has already brought so many great games from past consoles to Switch, there are still a ton of amazing Nintendo games I don’t want to see get left behind now that the eShop is closed and the online servers are shut off for good.

To take it a step further, Nintendo has a proven track record of adding something to its remakes and remasters to sweeten the pot a bit — whether its a new mode, games bundled together, or improvements to the controls — so I’m going to pitch what enhancements should come along with each game I want to see get another shot on Switch.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds and The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes with Local Multiplayer

A Link Between Worlds follows A Link to the Past’s footsteps in pretty much every way, so why not keep the tradition going with a remake? In 2003, Nintendo re-released the SNES classic on Game Boy Advance, and packed in alongside it was Four Swords, the Zelda series’ first real crack at multiplayer. It was real pain to access at the time — you needed a GBA link cable, multiple copies of the game, and a GBA for each player — but it was really cool to see two Zelda adventures packaged together like that.

I’d love to see the same treatment for the 3DS’ pair of original Zelda games: A Link Between Worlds and Tri Force Heroes. A Link Between Worlds is my favorite top-down Zelda game, released in a pre-Breath of the Wild era when Nintendo was just beginning to tinker with series conventions. The non-linear approach to dungeons scattered across Lorule, inventive item rental system, and memorable original characters like Ravio, Hilda, and Yuga really make A Link Between Worlds stand out.

Meanwhile, Tri Force Heroes is an awesome multiplayer Zelda game that I actually prefer to either Four Swords game. It ditches Four Swords’ competitive treasure hunting elements and doubles down on cooperation, introducing a shared team health bar, creative puzzles that require participation from all three players, and the novel Totem mechanic that involves stacking three Links on top of each other. Playing with strangers was at times more frustrating than fun, but if a Switch remake added local co-op into the mix, Tri Force Heroes could change its reputation from an often-ignored footnote to a memorable multiplayer adventure.

Kid Icarus: Uprising, BUT with Better Controls

Whenever I bring up my love for Kid Icarus: Uprising, I’m almost always met with the same response: “The controls suck!” I know, they’re not ideal. Holding the 3DS with one hand while aiming Pit’s shots on the touch screen was fine at best, and unplayable at worst. Nintendo even released a custom plastic stand alongside Uprising to help improve the comfort somewhat.

But if you got past the controls you’d find that Uprising offered a lot, like a fully-voiced, hilarious story, thrilling on-rails shooter levels that run circles around Fox McCloud’s best adventures, and a surprisingly robust online multiplayer mode with its own unique take on team deathmatch. Uprising is simply packed with excellent content, and legendary Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai’s fingerprints are all over it. All that’s in the way are the controls. If Uprising got an HD remake with twin stick controls and option gyro aiming, I’m sure more people would come to love one of my favorite Nintendo games of all time.

Kirby: Planet Robobot and Kirby: Triple Deluxe Double Pack

Last year, we got an excellent enhanced remaster of Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, which added an extra epilogue and a ton of subgames. Now that Return to Dreamland, Star Allies, and Forgotten Land are all available on Switch, the only modern mainline Kirby games still missing from the console are the 3DS’ Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot. Kirby has a habit of showing up a lot at the end of a Nintendo console’s life, so I think it’s possible we could see a remaster of the pink puffball’s 3DS platformers in the style of Return to Dreamland Deluxe.

I could honestly take or leave Triple Deluxe. The Hypernova ability never really grabbed me, nor did the new Archer, Beetle, Bell, and Circus copy abilities. But it would still pair nicely with Planet Robobot which is the true star here. Released to little fanfare near the end of the 3DS’ life in 2016, Planet Robobot is secretly one of the best Nintendo platformers out there. Planet Popstar is invaded by robots, giving every level an extremely cool mechanical look and feel. Plus, Kirby can pilot a giant mech suit and infuse it with his trademark copy abilities, meaning there’s more variety here than in almost any other game in the series. The Robobot Armor opens up possibilities for well-hidden collectibles, epic boss battles, and surprisingly clever puzzles, and it’s the perfect antidote for Kirby naysayers who claim the series is too simple.

Xenoblade Chronicles X to Get the Whole Series on Switch

Speaking of giant mechs, I’m genuinely surprised we’ve gone this many years without a Nintendo Switch port of Xenoblade Chronicles X. This was one of the most technically ambitious games on Wii U, to the point where players could download Data Packs to enhance the game’s textures and loading times. It was tough to fit those on the console without an external hard drive, and it was near-impossible to find other players in the online multiplayer lobbies due to the Wii U’s tiny install base, so Xenoblade Chronicles X is well overdue for a Switch port where series fans can experience it to the fullest. For the cherry on top, X is the only Xenoblade Chronicles game that’s not on Switch, and I love when an entire series is available in one place.

Samus Returns with Metroid Dread’s Art Style

Samus returned in a big way at E3 2017 when Nintendo teased Metroid Prime 4 for Nintendo Switch and revealed Metroid: Samus Returns for 3DS. We’re obviously still waiting on that first part of the announcement to come to fruition, but Samus Returns launched later that year and was a pretty great reimagining of the Game Boy’s original Metroid 2. Nintendo generally stays authentic to the original when it remakes a game but Samus Returns bucked that trend by introducing entirely new level design and mechanics. Samus Returns was Metroid Dread developer MercurySteam’s first outing with Nintendo’s galactic bounty hunter, and an HD Switch port would fill the Metroid gap nicely until Retro Studios is finally ready to unveil Prime 4. I always felt that Samus Returns was a little bit cramped on the 3DS’ small screen and limited shoulder buttons, so bringing this adventure up to Dread’s level of quality would be a huge win.

NES Remix and SNES Remix

NES Remix was one of the coolest games Nintendo made for Wii U. Playing the original Donkey Kong as Link instead of Mario feels like something you’d do on a flash website at the school library, not something you’d find in an official Nintendo game. But Nintendo’s desperation to make anything catch fire during the Wii U era led to some unprecedented risks with its franchises. And while the Switch era is better by almost every measure, Nintendo’s unabashed willingness to put out experiments like this highlighted the Wii U era. After NES Remix 1 and 2, SNES Remix felt like the logical next step, but it just never happened. With the Switch era seemingly barreling towards an end, Nintendo should revisit this franchise with either a simple port, or better yet, a full-fledged sequel.

Tomodachi Life with Miitopia’s Enhanced Mii Maker

Tomodachi Life is a cult classic for a reason, and it’s the game that finally took full advantage of the Miis. Thanks to Tomodachi Life, I’ve lived in an apartment building with Reggie Fils-Aime, Barack Obama, Princess Zelda, and so many more people and characters that shouldn’t all go together, but it just works. It was only held back by the Mii Maker itself, which hadn’t seen much improvement at the time since its origins on the Wii. But in Grezzo’s Switch remaster of the 3DS RPG Miitopia, we got a completely revamped Mii Maker that allowed players to truly run wild with impressive – and often terrifying – creations. A Tomodachi Life remaster with Miitopia’s Mii Maker would significantly improve a game that’s already really charming.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD

This one doesn’t need any special twist. Just make it happen already, Nintendo!

Logan Plant is IGN's Database Manager, Playlist Editor, and frequent Super Ninfriendo on Nintendo Voice Chat. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

“The world doesn’t want to be saved.”

So says Frankenstein, David Carradine’s warped freedom fighter, in Death Race 2000, the campy (but serious!), fun (but violent!), farcical (but prescient!) sci-fi actioner. Directed by Paul Bartel, the 1975 film posits a world 25 years into its own future where the United States has morphed into a totalitarian nightmare. But for modern viewers, watching today almost a quarter century after the Death Race was supposed to have arrived, Bartel’s film hits uncomfortably close to home at times.

After a title screen which appears to literally be a series of cheap pencil drawings – did I mention the film comes from famed low-budget impresario Roger Corman? – we find ourselves in the middle of a marching band as it belts out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But something seems off. There’s a strange insignia on the band uniforms, on the flag flying in the wind, everywhere – a clenched fist with a lightning bolt nestled inside it. As the crowd begins to take their seats in an outdoor arena, which is perched in front of a (crudely rendered – this budget is stretched to the seams) futuristic New York City, we see someone with a Nazi banner even as the national anthem mutates into queasy, all-is-not-well synths, implying that the country that anthem stands for has also been mutated. Like his protagonist, it’s a world Bartel doesn’t necessarily think we can come back from either.

You see, after the “World Crash of ’79,” things went from bad to worse, as the president – that’s Mr. President to you – moved abroad and the annual Transcontinental Road Race became the biggest mass-media opiate since social media. (Well, before social media, but you get the idea.) It’s a cross-country race, yes, but it’s also a free-for-all where no pedestrian is safe, and the more vulnerable you are, the more points a driver can score for running you over. As the TV announcer Junior Bruce (The Real Don Steele) says later in the film, “The race is the symbol of everything we hold dear – our American way of life! Sure it’s violent, but that’s the way we love it. Violent! Violent! Violent!”

Enter Frankenstein – “Frankenstein the legend, Frankenstein the indestructible,” to hear Junior describe him. Seemingly the closest thing the nation has to a hero, Carradine’s character is said to have survived the carnage of past years’ races and won more than once, but he’s also paid the price, judging by his scarred and masked face. He’s back for the twentieth annual race here, and Frankenstein’s fans are practically frothing at the mouth with excitement: “Half a face and half a chest and all the guts in the world!” the eminently quotable Junior yells as the veteran driver speeds onto the track.

Frankenstein eventually proves to be much more than he appears, but Death Race 2000’s terrifyingly ridiculous world centers itself on his legendary track record as a murderer of innocent men, women and children. As the Bipartisan Party’s Deacon sermonizes at the start of the race, the world is about to get a new American champion “to behold in awe, in respect, in fear.” And what better way to ensure that fear than with a strongman who shows no mercy, no empathy, and no compunction about killing those who, quite literally, stand in his way? That the masses have embraced this form of entertainment/governance is just blood-red icing on the Death Race cake.

Bartel is clearly having fun with the film’s concept, and for each body that is run over and erupts fake-looking blood everywhere, there’s a joke about, say, the French being the true enemy of the people for ruining our great American telephone system. But one senses that Corman (who produced) was a great balancing force for Bartel, making sure that Death Race 2000 was also giving the people of 1975 what they wanted: fast cars, naked flesh, and, well, bodies getting run over and erupting with fake-looking blood. There’s a synthesis that the two achieved somehow. For example, when one victim gets run over and a bag of blood explodes everywhere, it’s accompanied by a sound not unlike a balloon popping followed by a comedic whistle. One for you, one for me seems to be where Bartel and Corman landed.

Still, somewhere along the way, the film also manages to say something. Perhaps it’s more obvious 49 years later, now that we’re long past the actual year 2000 when, come to think of it, the French were to soon become the focus of many Americans’ ire, as were their fries. There’s also the obvious reality TV comparisons one can make to the race, of course, but the state of the media seems prophetic in the film too, where the young-skewing idiot influencer Junior Bruce (he’s your “buddy buddy” he assures us) is joined by Carle Bensen’s Harold, an ersatz Walter Cronkite type, and Joyce Jameson’s nightmarish chat-show host whose name is literally Grace Pander. The president pontificates about “minority privilege,” where the population toils so that the one percent can reap the benefits. And most alarming of all, today the idea of Nazis running over people, and our leaders defending those Nazis, isn’t such an outlandish concept.

And that brings us back to Frankenstein believing that the world doesn’t want to be saved. Carradine’s character is far from the monster his name – and introduction in the film – would have us believe. In time, we learn that he’s trying to fight the horrors of this world (and that the very idea of Frankenstein is a construct created to help keep the system running), but that his plan is just to assassinate the president. It’s only through the unlikely – OK, preposterous, if wonderfully so – love affair that develops between him and his new navigator (and secret rebel) Annie Smith (Simone Griffeth) that allows the living legend to realize that perhaps there is room for a world after the Transcontinental Road Race after all.

Indeed, Frankenstein is slowly disrobed throughout Death Race 2000’s running time even as more aspects of his life and true agenda are unveiled, starting as a masked, caped, leather-clad bogeyman and culminating in (what seems to be) a completely nude liberator at the climax, before being reborn in an all-white suit for the film’s denouement. Driving home the divide between the public’s perception of Frankenstein and the real man beneath the mask is Paul Chihara’s score; whenever a moment of tenderness occurs between Frankenstein and Annie, the composer kicks into a sweeter, more melodic mode that would almost be jarring if not for it being so effective.

As for the concept of the navigator, it falls firmly into the Corman side of the equation, as each driver in the Death Race has an attractive assistant whose function seems to be lover as much as navigator. This ensures nude massages, innuendo, and sex scenes, ticking off boxes on the producer’s recipe for exploitation success. But the opposing drivers and their navigators are also made up of an amusing collection of familiar faces, not the least of which is Sylvester Stallone as “Machine Gun” Joe Viterbo (a year out from Rocky), as well as Mary Woronov (Night of the Comet), Martin Kove (The Karate Kid), and Gopher from The Love Boat himself, Fred Grandy. This group brings a level of fun to the action, no doubt thanks to Bartel, which compensates for Carradine’s more driven and serious character (though Frankenstein does get a line about a “hand grenade” that cannot be unheard).

Carradine is great as Frankenstein. Early on, as Bartel teases out his first appearance, the actor does a rendition of Boris Karloff’s hands flailing as he staggers away from the press corps (his father, John, was in several Frankenstein movies back in the day). Later in the film, one of his devoted followers offers herself in sacrifice on the road. Frankenstein coldly accepts the offering, not for the points or to win the game, but because he’s giving the girl what she wants. Annie asks why she did it. His reply? “To show me she loves me.” She didn’t want to be saved either.

Death Race 2000 is a bit of an outlier as far as being a sci-fi movie from the first half of the 1970s in that it seems to offer a happy ending. The world doesn’t end, the heroes don’t get killed off, the Soylent Green isn’t people. No, in fact, Frankenstein takes over as the new president and marries Annie, and her do-gooding, liberal grandmother (Harriet Medin) becomes his Minister for Domestic Security. The race is even abolished! But the thing is, the rebels have proven almost entirely ineffective throughout the film. Why should we think that things are going to change now that they’re in charge?

For one thing, one of Frankenstein’s first acts as president is… to run Junior over with his car for being annoying.

And the crowd goes wild.

Talk to Executive Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the previous entry, an interview with Teyonah Parris for Women's History Month.

When Netflix announced the “first trailer for Dead Boy Detectives to be released this week,” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. The upcoming DC adaptation had gotten a teaser months and months ago. (Splitting hairs over the difference between a teaser and a trailer has proved to be a fool’s errand in recent years, but still…)

I’d like to say I was wrong. Not about the splitting hairs over teasers and trailers, that’s still dumb. (Though not as dumb as trailers for trailers; we can all agree that the death of that trend is right and just.) No, I was wrong about this week’s sneak peek being a run-of-the-mill second trailer, rehashing all of the same stuff just to add to the hype-train without any real substance. On the contrary, this new look at Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives is what dreams are made of. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, what Death is made of. And, more importantly, it highlights exactly why Dead Boy Detectives always needed to end up on Netflix rather than Max.

As far as their television adaptations are concerned, we met Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine in Doom Patrol Season 3 (portrayed then by Sebastian Croft and Ty Tennant). Eventually, Max decided they wanted to do a spinoff of the two, leaning into their popular comics history. The roles were recast due to the need of aging up the characters; the recasting brought in George Rexstrew as Payne, Jayden Revri as Rowland, and Kassius Nelson as Crystal Palace. However, when Doom Patrol met its fateful end, some fans assumed that Dead Boy Detectives would share its fate, ending up on the heap of other shows that (HBO) Max has scrapped.

As The Fates would have it, the series would end up at Netflix. Right where it belonged to begin with. You see, the Dead Boy Detectives don’t originate in the Doom Patrol comics (though they do cross over). The boys are introduced in The Sandman #25 during “Season of the Mists,” where their afterlife of evading Death (and hell) begins. But their small agency wouldn’t be introduced until three years later in the Vertigo crossover “The Children’s Crusade.”

If the series remained on Max, it’s likely that it would have played off of its connections to Doom Patrol. That would mean that Death would have probably remained either an unseen specter, chasing the boys throughout their misadventures, or a separate character altogether. She is, after all, the Sandman’s sister, and therefore likely solely tied to Netflix these days. However, landing on Netflix means that the series is free to intertwine the Dead Boy Detectives story with the series it was always meant to be connected to: The Sandman.

Fans of Neil Gaiman’s universe had been hoping and speculating for Sandman connectivity since Dead Boy Detectives was announced — a question that was ultimately answered by Gaiman last April — but this week’s trailer gives us the first tangible example of what that will mean for the series. Kirby Howell-Baptiste’s impeccable iteration of Death looms as the boys flee from their fate, even if we only see a quick glimpse of her in this trailer. And Death isn’t particularly used to not being able to capture her souls.

Now, technically, all of this could have happened regardless of which streaming platform the series ended up on — provided, of course, WBD’s licensing deal with Netflix didn’t forbid it — but history shows us that audiences prefer a level of continuity to where and how they’re watching their shows. Supergirl started out strong at CBS, but eventually resulted in diminishing returns. However, after crossing over with The Flash, CBS president Glenn Geller and team realized that the right home for the super-series was on their sister network The CW with the rest of the Arrowverse. (The Melissa Benoist-led series ranked as The CW’s most-watched telecast in its time slot in eight years in its premiere post-network shift.)

While Supergirl and The Flash couldn’t be more different in tone from The Sandman and Dead Boy Detectives, they do help showcase some audience behavior that makes it all the more clear that Charles Rowland and Edwin Paine have ended up exactly where they needed to be.

This also serves as a huge boon to Netflix itself. With The Witcher on the decline (sorry, Liam, it’s not your fault) and Stranger Things and The Umbrella Academy both seeing their final seasons in the near future, the streamer is in desperate need of tentpole series. It’s seen some success with live-action adaptations of beloved anime and animated classics of late, but diversification is key to the long-term success of the platform, especially as fans grow more and more tired of the “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” method and the constant loss of shows before they’ve completed their stories.

By showing us Death in this new trailer, Netflix has opened up a whole world of possibilities for Dead Boy Detectives and The Sandman alike. We don’t know when Season 2 of The Sandman will hit, but now we know we’ll be getting a taste of at least some of the goings-on on this side of the Dreaming before Morpheus and his siblings continue their stories. And with Dead Boy Detectives back in the universe it belongs in while still using Doom Patrol characters like Ruthie Connell’s Night Nurse, the possibilities are actually endless.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the previous entry, about The Girls on the Bus. This interview is a part of IGN's Women's History Month coverage.

A/N: An update was made to this column on the day of publish at 3:30PM PST, as a flerken mucked up the works. (Read: One instance of "flerken" was spelled with an "i".)

With The Marvels hitting Disney+ back in February, I had the opportunity to sit down with Marvel star Teyonah Parris to chat not just about the streaming and digital release, but Monica Rambeau’s place in the big, wide multiverse, as well as representation as a whole, the remarkable women she’s worked with, and raising the next generation of little geek girls.

While behind-the-scenes looks at The Marvels (and any other Parris starring project) give a glimpse at how at ease the actress is, you don’t know that she brings that energy to everyone around her until you’re occupying the same space. Parris arrived at our studio dressed to the nines — she was making the promotional rounds in Los Angeles and Burbank that day — and with a small army of a team. It can be an intimidating scene to witness, especially when someone carries themselves with the level of confidence that Parris does, but she couldn’t have connected with our teams faster.

I think it’s important to stress that I’m not talking about myself here, either. That wouldn’t be noteworthy — plenty of celebrities are known to gas up interviewers for whatever myriad of reasons they think may benefit the coverage. No, what I mean is that Parris is the exact type of person who still remembers that everyone she’s dealing with is a human being. (Something that probably shouldn’t be noteworthy, but I do live in Hollywood.)

Parris had an air of personability with everyone she spoke to that day but, for me, the most memorable moment was when she met my colleague who was acting as a producer for me that day. Sarah is a Captain Marvel super fan who has been following Lieutenant Trouble’s story since the beginning and was nervous to meet the woman who portrays one of her on-screen favorites. “Never meet your heroes” is a saying for a reason, after all! But when I introduced the two, Parris could not have been more engaged as Sarah quickly explained that she still had a Captain Marvel poster up in her room and gushed over the new film.

The press cycle is grueling. You never have time for anything — Parris and company hadn’t even had lunch yet — you’re sprinting from place to place, and your schedule is jam-packed, but at no moment did Parris make Sarah or anyone else feel like they didn’t have time to share or reach out. Those small moments should be celebrated more, I think. I suspect Sarah will carry that kindness with her for a long time.

As you may recall, The Marvels didn’t get a traditional pre-release press cycle as a result of the Hollywood strikes. Parris, Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and the rest of the film’s stars all had to watch from home as Flerkens overtook the red carpet. It might be easy to (cynically) assume that Parris' kindness that day was due to the combination of having to (mostly) miss out on promoting a film she loved making and being excited to hear someone loved it after all of the undeserved hate that was thrown at the film and its stars. But, thankfully, that hate never really made it Parris’ way.

“I can't say that I really felt the hate because we were in a very disconnected time,” she tells me. “I was surrounded by people who were excited for me, people who wanted and were waiting to see me and these other women get up here and kick butt. So I felt a lot of love.”

It turns out that love would play a very important role in Parris’ life from the point that she wrapped on the film all the way through the red carpet, largely because, after all of that work, she didn’t get the chance to traditionally wrap on the film (which usually involves some fanfare and goodbyes). That’s because on the day before she was to wrap, someone she had been in proximity to tested positive for COVID.

“And so they snatched me anyway, so I never actually wrapped,” Parris explains. “I was like, ‘What? You have got to be kidding me.’ Like, 10 months or whatever, however long we were here and the day before, I didn't have COVID, but someone around me had it. And so they snatched my butt off the set.”

Parris didn’t pretend like missing out on the red carpet didn’t sting, too. “I'm watching the Flerkens and the cats on the red carpet like, ‘That's some bull,’” she says, being candid about her reaction at the time.

Still, her relationships helped get her through the hurdles of filming during quarantine and then ultimately missing out on many of the celebrations that should have come along with wrapping a major blockbuster. Parris speaks fondly of Larson and Vellani all throughout our discussion, highlighting the bonds that formed as they explored their own corner of the multiverse. But there was one particular relationship that was already well formed before Parris had even stepped foot on set — the one she has with writer/director Nia DaCosta. The Marvels marks the second project the two have worked on together after 2021’s Candyman.

“I love Nia's mind and how it works,” Parris explains after I ask what makes her keep coming back for DaCosta projects. “She's also just very collaborative and open to ideas, and also just really gives me, the artist, the space to make their own choices. [...] So I’ve loved our working relationship. She trusts me, I trust her, and we have been able to just make really cool projects and movies from that that are rooted in that trust.”

That trust is most certainly evident as you watch the behind-the-scenes footage on The Marvels Blu-ray (or the Assembled episode on Disney+) and see Parris flinging about in a stunts rig she is clearly terrified of but did her best to conquer anyway.

DaCosta marks only the second woman of color — and the first Black Woman — to direct an MCU film. While there’s still much work to be done behind the camera so far as involving more diverse voices is concerned, we have started to see some real progress in Phases 4 and 5 when it comes to getting women and people of color better represented in the MCU’s vast, sprawling multiverse. When Parris and I started discussing what this means, we got on the topic of the next generation of little Black girls watching these projects, and what it means for her to raise her daughter in a world where we have characters like Monica Rambeau front and center in popular culture.

“I am so grateful for that. I am excited that my child, this whole generation of younger people and also adults... I actually needed this sort of content in college,” she says. “Right now in the MCU and in this superhero space, it has opened up so much to be more diverse and show that superheroes can look like any of us.”

But it’s not just the “super” part that matters. Part of what makes The Marvels shine is that it’s the first time we get to see Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel fully treated as a human instead of a monolith, alongside Monica finally getting the opportunity to feel and really grieve all of the tragedy and unfinished business that has followed her throughout her entire tenure in the MCU. That impact really hits home for Parris.

“Just to see people who look like you, [or] who don't look like you, be in situations that are familiar but are also quite extraordinary,” she says, “and how they deal with those circumstances and trials that may come to them and watching them be human, they are super.”

It took a long time — 15 years, but who’s counting — for us to get to something as incredible as The Marvels in the MCU. In 2008, a film centering on three women, none of which look like each other or share a cultural background, felt like an impossible dream. And it’s directed by a wildly talented Black woman? If you’d told 18-year-old me that something like this could be in my future, I would have laughed. Pretty bitterly, frankly (that’s right, I’ve always been this way). But here we are now, in a present where films like The Marvels don’t just exist, but are laying the groundwork for the future of what has ultimately been the longest-running film saga of our generation.

Representation may move at a glacial pace, but move it does. It’s really hard to remember that sometimes — at least for me. Parris carries herself with such grace as we bounce back and forth between the delight of The Marvels and the unearned hate it received. She undoubtedly feels the frustrations of it all too, but while someone like me reacts with her temper, Parris simply puts forth her joy and, perhaps most importantly, her hope. That comes through so clearly when she discusses her advice for the next little Black girl dreaming about becoming the next Marvel superhero.

“Oh. Baby, it's possible,” she starts with a grin. “It is possible, and I pray that you come in and do things that I couldn't do and that you show the world spaces and abilities and humanity and compassion and grace in ways that I couldn't do and that it just keeps carrying on and carrying forward. But, baby, you can do it, and you can do whatever else you want to do. It really is possible. I am truly sitting in a dream, a dream."

Some quotes have been edited or condensed for clarity.

Ten years ago on March 31, 2014, then-Xbox Game Studios boss Phil Spencer was named Head of Xbox. And he inherited quite a mess. You all know the story; there’s no need to beat the horse corpse for the ten-thousandth time. The brand was in disarray after what can, without hyperbole, be called a pretty disastrous launch of the Xbox One. So how far has Xbox come under Spencer’s tenure? And where’s it going from here? Let’s look back and then look forward.

To his credit, Spencer didn’t waste any time trying to clean up that mess. In May of 2014 he unbundled the Kinect motion controller from the Xbox One, thus instantly lowering the price of the console to $399 and back to price parity with Sony’s PlayStation 4. One year later at E3 2015 he announced Xbox’s extensive backwards compatibility effort to some of the loudest applause I’ve ever heard at an Xbox E3 press conference. It was a much-needed dose of player-first good news for Xbox fans, and it would be a years-long effort that brought hundreds of legacy games forward to present and future Xbox consoles (with many of them later technically improved to boot), but it would not be the last.

The Xbox One generation was nevertheless a rough one for Spencer and the Xbox team, though, primarily because of some significant first-party disappointments during much of that time. Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s online multiplayer was an unmitigated disaster at launch and for a long time after (though to the studio’s credit, 343 Industries eventually got it working brilliantly while also adding Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach into the package). Lionhead weirdly tried to pivot Fable into a 4v1 multiplayer game, and not only did it not work, the game got canceled shortly before release and the studio was shut down. The highly anticipated Scalebound was canceled too. Crackdown 3 was a dud. Halo 5’s campaign couldn’t live up to its fantastic marketing campaign.

But there were some serious bright spots. Sunset Overdrive was a criminally overlooked gem from a studio that had only ever worked with Sony prior to this and, in hindsight, Insomniac’s critically acclaimed and commercially successful Spider-Man series wouldn’t have happened without it. Exclusive-at-launch Cuphead was a breakout indie hit and one of the most visually unique games ever made. Microsoft bought the Gears of War franchise from Epic Games and its new caretakers at The Coalition made two absolutely fantastic sequels to continue the series. The Ori games were both phenomenal.

Hardware was given a welcome refresh under Spencer’s watch too. The Xbox One S was a much smaller, sleeker, and even slightly more powerful version of the console that, as a bonus, had a built-in power supply, meaning that there was no massive power brick like the original Xbox One had. The Xbox One X came along in 2017 and was a true step above the PlayStation 4 Pro in horsepower, able to deliver native 4K gaming while the PS4 Pro frequently faked it. And console prices continued to come down.

Another initiative that launched in 2017 is probably the one that will go at the very top of Spencer’s career resume when it’s all said and done: Xbox Game Pass. It’s fair to say that it has changed gaming as a whole, offering subscribers access to a catalog of hundreds of games each month, including any and every first-party game Microsoft makes. In fact, there’s even a first-party Sony game in it! In just seven years, Xbox Game Pass has swelled to over 34 million monthly subscribers and arguably become the thing you think of first when you think of the Xbox brand.

Of course, you need lots of games to feed a service like Game Pass in order to keep people subscribing each month, and so Spencer set out to fix the first-party game problem in the boldest of ways: by leveraging Microsoft’s massive war chest and buying studio after studio after studio. A ton of talent suddenly came through Microsoft’s door, from the Forza Horizon wizards at Playground Games to the RPG gurus at Obsidian to game design legend Tim Schafer and his team at Double Fine Productions.

He also deserves credit for Xbox’s industry leadership in normalizing accessibility features in gaming, winning awards in the process. From the Xbox Adaptive Controller to ASL support baked directly into games, Xbox has walked the walk of Spencer’s talk of bringing gaming to everyone.

As Spencer did what he could to salvage the Xbox One generation, his hardware ambitions got bigger for the first console generation that he’d be heading up from the get-go. The Xbox Series X is a great machine that has plenty of horsepower, looks awesome, and works as whisper-quietly as it does reliably. Meanwhile, Spencer’s strategy of lowering the price of entry for the new console by offering a non-4K version of the Series X in the form of the Series S also seems to have paid off, with Xbox doing better than it ever has.

But Spencer would only get bolder as the Xbox Series era unfolded. Microsoft spent $7.5 billion and bought Bethesda/ZeniMax, which included Todd Howard’s Bethesda Game Studios, Doom developer id Software, Dishonored’s Arkane, and more. And then they spent SIXTY-NINE BILLION DOLLARS to pick up the whole of Activision-Blizzard-King, which includes Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Candy Crush. The purchase price dwarfs the previous largest video game industry acquisition ever by a factor of five, triggering regulatory challenges in multiple countries before the deal was ultimately approved and finalized. Unfortunately, thanks in part to the pandemic and also to the ever-growing incubation time needed to make AAA games, players still have yet to see a steady flow of first-party games despite all of these larger and smaller acquisitions.

And so I would argue that Phil Spencer’s first decade as the top man at Xbox can be summed up this way: a gamer-first focus on great services like backwards compatibility and Xbox Game Pass that hasn’t quite yet delivered a consistent quantity and quality of first-party games, though the future looks incredibly bright no matter where and how you like to play. As for the next ten years? Personally, I’m incredibly excited, as Spencer has shown that, above all else, he puts players first and he’s not afraid to spend money to build out Xbox Game Studios. Soon there will be a never-ending wave of first-party games in any genre you could ask for, all available as part of your Xbox Game Pass subscription, and you might even be able to play them on the go too. Here’s to the next decade of Xbox.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

If I were to write a list of all the things that made Skyrim special, it’d be as long as The Elder Scrolls themselves. Considering that’s a massive waste of parchment, I can boil Skyrim’s magic down to one word: dragons. Few games have recaptured the thrill of Tamriel’s wyrms crashing down from the sky to interrupt an otherwise run-of-the-mill fetch quest. But I’ve got good news: that very same sense of awe, terror, and excitement fuels Dragon’s Dogma 2, a game where a towering cyclops can unexpectedly emerge from the forest’s edge, or a terrifying drake swoop down from on high, all in unscripted, emergent moments.

If you’re familiar with the original Dragon’s Dogma, then you’ll likely know that the game’s director, Hideaki Itsuno, was partly inspired by The Elder Scrolls series. That inspiration makes the first game, and in turn Dragon’s Dogma 2, stand out against not only the traditions of Japanese-developed RPGs, but also much of the Western RPG scene, too. Dragon’s Dogma 2 rejects many of the genre’s narrative-heavy staples in favour of a more organic, exploration-focused structure. It’s a philosophy that powers Bethesda Game Studios’ trademark approach, and so within Dragon’s Dogma 2 there are recognisable echoes of Skyrim.

Our memories of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim are more often than not related to our lived experiences within the world, rather than specific characters or narrative beats. This makes The Elder Scrolls something unusual among RPGs, a genre typically reliant on novel-like stories. It’s likely a result of the series having roots in Ultima Underworld, the key progenitor of games like System Shock and Deus Ex. These games are built on interlocking systems and mechanics that combine to create worlds that feel organic and authentic – everything has its purpose and interacts with the things around it. While story is a foundational pillar in these games, it’s delivered without the cinematic lens used in more traditional RPGs - they’re not Baldur’s Gate, Mass Effect, or Dragon Quest. These are games about doing and experiencing, rather than being part of a beautifully written tale.

That brings us back to Skyrim’s dragons, and in turn Dragon’s Dogma 2’s array of colossal beasts. They turn up without warning, injecting unexpected challenges into… well, anything. You could be having a mundane stroll back to the city to hand in a quest, or be in the middle of an already heated battle. Just yesterday I was on an errand to collect gold ore, only for my mining expedition to be interrupted by a ferocious griffin. A great battle ensued, with my party calling down bolts of lightning and shooting flaming arrows in an attempt to bring it down. The creature eventually realised it was bested and so took to the skies, but not before I grabbed its tail and clambered onto its hind leg. Hurtling through the skies and hanging on for dear life, I began a new adventure. An adventure with no quest log entry or objective – I’d just let this massive half-eagle, half-lion decide my fate.

Many RPGs carry the sense of being crafted for you; every quest is bespoke for your protagonist. Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels much more organic. The world lives and breathes of its own accord, and every time you step outside your front door you’re at the mercy of the overlapping systems that give its creatures life and make its rivers flow (I should mention here that Dragon’s Dogma 2’s rivers can literally eat you). It means that every journey is an anecdote delivery machine – you can’t go from A to B without some kind of wild and wonderful event leaping out at you.

I recall my time in Skyrim in exactly the same way – permanent images of being chased by frost trolls and stumbling across giants herding mammoths, none of which were part of any actual quest. Many of us remember Bethesda's schtick of “See that mountain? You can go there”, but it wasn’t actually the mountain that was important – it was the journey there. The many unscripted, organic moments that happened on your particular journey are what make Skyrim special, as they made it your experience, not everybody else's. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an entire game cut from this same cloth.

This kind of approach comes with its own drawbacks though. Creating a land this big, where the fun is often ‘whatever happens to you’ rather than pre-scripted quests, means there has to be a dozen systems constantly ticking behind the scenes to keep the world alive. More moving parts means more jank, and if there’s anything a Skyrim fan knows well it's jank. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is exactly the same. Its NPCs repeat ever-looping dialogue. Your companions are over-eager and constantly get in trouble. Characters stare dead-eyed into the wrong direction for entire conversations. Combat feels messy and imprecise. It’s a list of things that would traditionally see a game written off. But rather than diminishing its quality, these rough edges feel oddly comforting because they lend the game personality… a personality reminiscent of Skyrim. There’s something endearing about all this distinctly video game-y artifice, and how it finds a way to sit in harmony alongside a world that so often feels truly alive.

Perhaps that feeling is rooted in nostalgia. We’re in a golden age of RPGs, but few games try to capture the very specific magic of Skyrim. We’ve been waiting 13 years for something that comes close, and it could be that we’re waiting forever if we pin our hopes on Bethesda. In the years since Skyrim’s launch, the studio’s games have increasingly been inspired by the survival genre rather than advancements in the RPG space. Fallout 4’s crafting and building focus was a clear response to Minecraft’s colossal success, while Fallout 76 attempted to ride the wave of Steam’s survival game boom. More recently, Starfield’s procedurally generated galaxy is inescapably in No Man’s Sky’s orbit. It stands to reason, then, that The Elder Scrolls 6 could push further in this direction, potentially at the expense of what made us fall in love with Oblivion and Skyrim.

Dragon’s Dogma 2, though, with its map absent of icon clutter and reliance on curiosity, discovery, and emergent gameplay, feels akin to a Bethesda game that took inspiration from Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. These are touchstones that are hard not to get excited about – I appreciate Bethesda is what it is precisely because it doesn’t make RPGs like anyone else, but I’d like to see it push focus on its open worlds rather than its survival elements. Thankfully, that’s what I’m getting from Dragon’s Dogma 2.

Capcom’s latest is different from Skyrim in many ways – its lore is a pamphlet in comparison, its quest design is only half as good, and you definitely can’t play as a stealth archer. It’s much more challenging than an Elder Scrolls game, too, with long and often arduous journeys that must be sufficiently planned for. Messing up can mean reverting to an hours-old save. And so Dragon’s Dogma 2 is not a ‘spiritual sequel’ to Skyrim in the way that Obsidian’s Avowed is positioned to be.

But Skyrim’s true magic was never what it was, but how it made you feel. And, for the first time in 13 years, I finally had that same feeling again. The world of Dragon’s Dogma 2 has the spirit of Skyrim flowing through it. It feels like a home away from home (although only if you think homes should be full of 20-feet-tall monsters that surprise attack you in the middle of the night.)

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Features Editor.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the previous entry, We Did Lisa Frankenstein Dirty During Its Theatrical Run.

This column contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Girls on the Bus.

Part of me feels insane for digging a series about political journalism on the campaign trail while we’re in the midst of election year hell. While that’s probably a discussion I need to have with my therapist, my enjoyment of Max’s The Girls on the Bus remains. A big part of that enjoyment is probably rooted in seeing something told from the contemporary journalist’s perspective instead of from the negative light that we frequently see in film and television. But it’s also largely thanks to the dynamics between the series’ four leading ladies.

The series focuses on three political journalists and an influencer, each filling the role of a pretty standard archetype (presumably so they may develop layers as the series progresses). The first few episodes showcase Melissa Benoist’s Sadie McCarthy, the hopeful idealist who truly believes in the candidates she writes about — sometimes to her detriment — more than the other three women, but the series makes it clear that each character has an important role to play in the coming scandal(s). Carla Gugino is Grace Gordon Greene, the seasoned, cutthroat journalist who will do whatever it takes for a scoop; Christina Elmore is Kimberlyn Kendrick, a Black Republican writing for a Fox News-esque rag and trying to plan her wedding alongside a demanding future mother-in-law while also fighting for her rightful place at the top of her organization; and Natasha Behnam is Lola Rahaii, an influencer who doesn’t believe journalism matters anymore and “branded content” is our future.

Despite fitting pretty cleanly into their individual character models, The Girls on the Bus weaves the protagonists together in a way that forces them to be interesting — even before they grow into the well-rounded characters they’ll presumably be by the end of the series. Each of them challenges the others in their own respective ways, making their unexpected friendships curious but engaging at every step.

I checked out the show because I’m an avid fan of both Benoist and Gugino, but early on it’s Elmore and Rahaii who shine the brightest. The Girls on the Bus makes the active decision to make its Republican reporter a Black woman, and in doing so it immediately creates a very important subtext to the series: politics are about how much you believe you should pay in taxes, what those taxes should go toward, etc. and never about whether or not certain groups of people should have the right to live freely because of the color of their skin, the people they love, or their gender identity. Elmore’s Kimberlyn has a line that drives this home in the first episode, which she delivers smoothly after Sadie asks how a Black woman could vote Republican: “Everyone in this country is racist. At least they’re honest about it.” She knows who her colleagues are and what they stand for, but she’s interested in bringing actual news to the forefront of the channel otherwise known for its propaganda and sensationalism.

Meanwhile, Behnam’s story as Lola is more about growth. She’s humbled a few times early on as she learns that “breaking the rules” and being a “disruptor” have no value if you don’t know what said rules are or understand why you’re breaking them in the first place. Lola’s development starts with a cheeky bet with Grace, where the seasoned reporter teaches her how little our political landscape changes and, due to her loss, the influencer is forced to read The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm (a book about the psychology of the profession, frequently taught in Journalism school). Things don’t stop there, though. Lola continues to learn about her surroundings when Sadie tries to save her from a misunderstanding over the press pool, during which Lola shows up in a bikini and pool gear instead of being adorned in business casual attire and the emotional preparation to be bored out of her mind for several consecutive hours.

Ultimately, the budding mystery around Sadie’s burner phone is of little importance to my enjoyment of the show. I suppose that this is beneficial, given that reviews have highlighted how weak that plotline ends up being by the end, but I do wish we were in a time when the series could solely rely on whatever the heck is going on with these four wildly different women and the annoying, difficult, realistic picture it paints of our current political landscape, and still get greenlit.

That said, maybe this mystery has a few tricks up its sleeve. Right now it feels more distracting than valuable. But, if it ends up resulting in more ways for these women to connect, I can’t be too mad about it.

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the previous entry, Have You Heard About Our Lord and Savior, Shōgun?

Lisa Frankenstein, the directorial debut of Zelda Williams with a script penned by Diablo Cody, hit theaters in February of this year. There it was met with conflicting reviews by critics (“middling” being the wrong word here, given that the reviews were typically very positive or very negative) and an embarrassing box office cume of $9.9 million throughout its run. A lot of “life” happened in February, so I unfortunately had to miss not one, but two screenings of the film prior to its release (yeah, I was part of the problem). However, now that it’s on digital, I dropped the cash to rent it. I spent a hearty $19.99 to do so, so I recommend just buying a physical copy when it becomes available in July. It will hit Peacock sometime around then as well, if you prefer to stream it first.

When we first learned about Lisa Frankenstein in late 2023, I warned people that the film was about to become my entire personality. I am here to report that I was right and it is great and, like the impeccable and misunderstood Jennifer’s Body before it — which was also a Diablo Cody script, by the way — it deserved better.

I’m sorry, this is the movie that we let Argylle beat at the box office? Lisa Frankenstein was stylish and funny and unapologetically feminine and we let it lose to the movie that made me go viral because it broke me with how absolutely terrible it was? Don’t get me wrong, Lisa Frankenstein only cost $13 million to make, so it lost way less money than the much pricier Argylle, which came with a hefty $200 million price tag. Still, it’s the principle of the matter! I know my indignance is lost in a sea of countless other incredible independent films that were outgrossed by worse, uglier, but ostensibly “bigger” movies, but Lisa Frankenstein is the one we’re talking about today!

Of course, box office isn’t necessarily indicative of quality. Plenty of incredible films have flopped at the box office without reducing their merit as art. What a floundering box office can harm, however, is discoverability. Now here’s hoping Zelda Williams goes on to have the career she deserves and people remember the other times Diablo Cody-penned films were done dirty and Lisa Frankenstein quickly finds its way to the cult classic status it deserves. But, on paper, the movie had all the makings of what should have been a slam dunk for Focus Features and the team behind the film. And yet, it wasn’t.

Stars Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse have no shortage of fans, with Newton coming from Supernatural — as well as Freaky and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — and Sprouse just off the tail end of a long stint on Riverdale. (RIP, CW Network. We’ll miss you always.) Meanwhile, Diablo Cody comes with plenty of followers thanks to a storied writing career, and we all know who Zelda Williams is! You mean to tell me that people weren’t at least curious about what her directorial debut may look like?! I’m to understand that a bunch of people saw that poppy, neon-drenched trailer and thought “nah”? Was it Frankenstein-fatigue after Poor Things? Did we all just sleep through February?

I could go on about the slow, depressing death of movie theaters likely playing a major role in the soft theatrical run for Lisa Frankenstein. But you’ve read that kind of piece a million times by now and it is, as mentioned, depressing. Besides, I’d rather finish this off with gushing about why it’s worth checking out in hopes that it doesn’t eventually join the growing sea of lost media in the streaming era.

Every inch of Lisa Frankenstein is quirky and nostalgic — a fact that makes me hopeful that Williams and Cody team up again in the future — but it’s also just plain fun. It’s a traditional teen-girl movie wrapped up in a horror-comedy blanket and then cooked in an ’80s tanning bed. There are scenes in this movie that your brain tells you it can smell, from the burning hair all the way to the pounds of Aqua Net hairspray.

Taking me back to cooked-hair memories — full disclosure, I’m only an ’80s baby in the sense that I was born in them, but this unfortunate trend followed us well into the ’90s and ’00s — is impressive, sure, but Lisa Frankenstein’s greatest accomplishment is one shared with most of Cody’s body of work: It is unapologetically, unabashedly female. Not in the Barbie way (which is exceptional), where it explicitly spells out all the things about being a woman that a lot of people still need to hear, but in the way where women’s day-to-day lives are simply treated as normal.

Periods and period products are mentioned repeatedly throughout the film; a douche bag is picked up off the counter (ladies, your body’s pH levels are fine unless your doctor has told you otherwise, people are just trying to sell you shit); a vibrator is casually waved around more than once; the list goes on. None of these play any real role in the plot; they’re just passively there or mentioned as part of a day in the life of a cis female. Even Lisa’s growing interest in sex and sexuality is normalized by her very sex-positive sister, Taffy (Liza Soberano), who in any other story would be the mean, bitchy prep who ruined her step-sister’s life. But not in Lisa Frankenstein! Taffy is preppy, and she’s also kinda mean and ditsy, but she also genuinely loves Lisa and truly wants her to be a part of her family. There’s a whole, y’know, string of murders that eventually comes between them… but their relationship is very cute otherwise!

We’ve been blessed with two Frankenstein riffs in as many years, both of which are aggressively, beautifully, unrepentantly feminine and strange, just as Mary Shelley would have wanted it. Lisa Frankenstein won’t end up anywhere near the Oscars, but it serves just fine as Poor Things’ spunky, sometimes-a-little-messy, little sister. I’m thrilled I finally had the chance to watch it, and I hope you take the time to do so as well! It’s never too late to support great movies (y’know, so long as they don’t get lost to the digital ether).

Remember The Year of Luigi? You know, that last-ditch effort marketing campaign Nintendo rolled out back in 2013 when not much else was going on for the company? To be fair, some solid games came out of The Year of Luigi, like New Super Luigi U and Dr. Luigi, but all the Luigi spin-offs and re-skins in the world couldn’t save Nintendo from losing over $400 million in 2013 when it was all said and done. The Year of Luigi remains an unintentionally hilarious footnote from a completely different era of Nintendo, and poor Mr. L never deserved to get wrapped up in one of the biggest Ls in company history. It goes without saying that Nintendo hasn’t really attempted another marketing campaign like this since.

Nintendo finds itself in a very different financial situation today compared to a decade ago, and it’s not in a place where it needs to rely on gimmicks to succeed; Nintendo Switch and its games speak for themselves. But, if Nintendo did put a label on the last 12 months, I’m confident they’d call it The Year of Peach. From her prominent role in The Super Mario Bros. Movie to finally starring in a new standalone game, Nintendo’s giving Peach more attention than ever before, and frankly, it’s long overdue. So this year on Mario Day, I’m asking the popular plumber to step aside and embrace the Mushroom Kingdom’s fearless leader finally getting her well-deserved moment in the spotlight.

Over the past several decades, Peach has been kidnapped, sidelined, and nearly forced into marrying Bowser while other characters have hogged all the starring roles. Yes, Peach is a staple of ensemble games like Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Super Smash Bros., but I’ve always felt Peach has been underutilized while other side characters like Luigi, Donkey Kong, Wario, Yoshi, and even the pathetic (but lovable!) Captain Toad got games of their own. For the sheer amount of games Nintendo releases that take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, it’s been surprising that we’ve lacked a standalone game starring the franchise's leading lady.

But that changed last summer when Nintendo revealed Princess Peach: Showtime, the first solo adventure for the character since 2006, and only the second overall. While it remains to be seen how the game will turn out, it’s undeniably cool that Showtime appears to exist entirely as its own thing, completely separate from the rest of the Mario universe. As my colleague Rebekah Valentine put it, “I genuinely want to see Nintendo make a game where Peach is defined only by herself, and not by labels like Mario’s love interest, Mario’s damsel, Mario’s princess.” While we still don’t know for certain if Mario will rear his mustachioed head in Showtime, for the time being it seems like that wish is coming true, and it’s fantastic to see Nintendo adding a Peach-focused adventure to its extensive lineup of Mario games, detached from the traditions and expectations of the mainline series.

Princess Peach: Showtime isn’t the only reason that we’re living in The Year of Peach. Last year, Princess Peach was one of the most important characters in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, as Nintendo and Illumination smartly flipped Peach and Luigi’s traditional roles, sending Peach and Mario on an adventure to save the captive Luigi. Peach had as much screen time as anyone in the film, and it felt right seeing her front-and-center rather than trapped in yet another castle.

Following this, Peach was a fully playable character in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and it was about time. Growing up playing the New Super Mario Bros. games with my older sister, we never understood why cookie cutter characters like Blue and Yellow Toad were included rather than recognizable fan-favorite characters like Peach and Daisy, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder finally delivered a fleshed-out roster of characters where you can play through the entire game as anyone you like, no Mario required. Credit goes to Super Mario 3D World for doing this more than 10 years ago, but I loved seeing Super Mario Bros. Wonder take the idea and run with it.

Just a month after Super Mario Bros. Wonder came Super Mario RPG. This remake of the SNES classic features Princess Peach as a party member, and playing out turn-based battles with a crew of Peach, Mario, and Bowser was just as exciting in 2023 as I'm sure it was in the original Super Nintendo version. And later this year, Nintendo will release a remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, which includes an extremely memorable storyline centered around Princess Peach, including some dedicated segments where she is highlighted as the playable character. I can't wait for Nintendo fans who missed the GameCube original to see how awesome Peach is in The Thousand-Year Door, which I consider to be one of her coolest appearances ever.

There’s never been a better time to be a Princess Peach fan, and I hope Nintendo continues its efforts to build out her blossoming corner of the Mushroom Kingdom. If all goes well, Princess Peach: Showtime will be just the first of many solo Peach games to come, and one of Nintendo’s most iconic characters will manage to reach Nintendo fans young and old in entirely new ways. Move over Mario Day, because this is the unofficial Year of Peach, and I’m completely here for it.

Logan Plant is IGN's Database Manager, Playlist Editor, occasional news writer, and frequent Super Ninfriendo on Nintendo Voice Chat. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Spoiler alert! Some people have an extremely low tolerance for spoilers. Revealing any detail about a movie, TV show, or game they haven’t seen or played yet is like bringing peanut butter to an elementary school; someone is going to be allergic. That sets up an inevitable conflict with reviewers, because our whole job is to tell you something you don’t already know about a game, movie, or show – specifically, whether or not we like it – and then explain why. Of course, it’s possible to get your points across without major reveals, but when you’re writing for an audience that includes both extremes of the spoiler spectrum – those who hate them with a passion and those who crave them so much they’ll go frame-by-frame through a video review to extract any scrap of new information – it’s quite a tightrope to walk successfully.

Personally, I’m a bit spoiler-phobic myself. When I’ve decided I want to play or watch something I tend to avoid any trailers, previews, or reviews until after I’ve experienced it for myself. I always turn off the TV when the “Next time, on XXXX” teaser comes up because I don’t need to be enticed to watch something I was already sold on. Sure, there are exceptions to that: I’ve obsessively gone over Star Wars trailers to pick up references and hints, because that’s fun for me – as someone who knows way too much about that lore, it’s part of the experience to make my own predictions about what’s coming and then compare that to what actually happens. (I am often wrong.) So I get it!

I know that a lot of you are already tracking down examples of where we crossed your personal lines, and yes, there have certainly been many TMI incidents over the years. There’s no disputing that, especially when there isn’t even a one-size-fits-all approach to what is and is not a spoiler. Last year when I reviewed Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, I managed to offend some folks by revealing the return of a villain from Fallen Order – they were the first boss battle and came and went in a flash without any real effect on the story, but since they hadn’t been shown off in trailers (which again, I had not watched because I’d already decided to play this game) it was considered a faux pas. It goes to show that what one person considers to be an egregious spoiler might not be a big deal for someone else. Probably most other people, in fact.

As an aside, it’s always struck me as bizarre to consider anything that’s not revealed in a trailer to be a spoiler, while things that aren’t revealed in a trailer are. Historically, trailers are often spoilery as hell. I’ll never forget seeing the trailer for Ben Affleck’s Daredevil movie that literally showed Colin Farrell’s Bullseye falling to his death! I’ve read plenty of accounts of trailers and advertisements being done without consultation with directors or writers or anybody else. Trailers are, after all, pure marketing: they exist to make you want to watch or play something by any means necessary, and if someone thinks the best way to do that is to tell you that (spoiler) Henry Cavill’s Superman shows up at the end of Black Adam, they’ll absolutely spoil it.

When you think about it, though, if marketing material from a movie studio or game publisher told you everything you needed to know to figure out if you think you’ll probably like something or not, there’d be no such thing as a review at all. We’re here to give you the perspective and opinion of someone who isn’t going to make more money if you buy a game or a movie ticket, and that different set of priorities means we’re going to want to show and tell you different things than they do. That’s not to say you’ll always agree with our opinions – heck, I don’t agree with all of our reviewers’ opinions either, but I do respect them because I know for a fact that there is no single review of any work of any form of art that everybody will agree with. That’s why there are so many results when you type “[anything] review” into Google!

Anyway, in my experience, a lot of spoiler complaints stem from a reviewer talking about something that, from the perspective of someone who has already played a game or seen a movie, is insignificant and not worthy of being treated as a radioactive secret. The problem is that when they’re taken out of context, something that’s a throwaway can seem like a big reveal – and people are just as mad when they think they’ve been spoiled, even if they really haven’t. Another issue is internet sleuthing: there have been many times when close examination of the UI in a two-second gameplay clip has revealed something that only diehard fans could’ve picked up on, but they then proceed to give everybody else all of the context in the comments. But being sensitive to spoilers isn’t a crime – you’re in no way wrong to not want to be spoiled on even small details.

The guidance I give to our reviewers is that – aside from cases in which we have a spoiler warning at the top of the page (usually reserved for extremely popular “watercooler discussion” shows that everyone and their mother has already watched) – we should only reveal as much of the plot as is absolutely necessary to back up our arguments. You don’t need to reveal that Darth Vader is really Anakin Skywalker in order to say that The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie in part due to its shocking revelations and deepening relationships between its characters. In fact, unless you’re going to say something positive or negative about it, there’s no need to discuss any element of the plot or a character at all. But if you do have something to say and need to point to specifics to make it clear what you’re talking about, it’s generally best to use examples that take place early on and don’t hint too heavily at what’s to come.

Naturally, even a cautious approach is still going to be TMI for some people, who want reviewers’ recommendations but very few details. That’s a big part of why we build our reviews the way we do: there are four different levels of information to most of them, each giving you an increasing level of detail and allowing you to decide how deep you want to go – and the secret to this tiered approach is to look at a review from the bottom up.

The first level is the score. While there certainly are a lot of legitimate criticisms of scores, one of the big benefits is that they’re completely spoiler-free. You can check the score on a movie or show or game you’re looking forward to to get a positive, negative, or middling opinion on it without so much as a hint as to why the reviewer felt that way. But if you’re intrigued to know just a bit more, scroll up a little.

The second level is the Verdict, just above the score. Here we try to distill all of our major points, good and bad, into a single moderate-length paragraph summary. This leaves little room for detail that most people would consider to be spoilery. If you’re looking for a rapid-fire list of pros and cons without too much context, this is as far as you need to go.

If, however, you’d like those claims to be backed up in detail, we have the review itself. These can be anywhere from 500 words on a 24-minute TV episode to the occasional 5,000-word opus that delves into fine detail on what makes something – almost always a game that spans dozens of hours and leaves us with much to discuss – tick. These are often packed full of anecdotes of interesting things that happened to us outside of the main story, examples of how mechanics like combat and leveling work, interface, controls, AI, map layout, companion characters, comparisons to other related games, music and sound, etc – all in service of illustrating our argument. But again, the goal is never to spill the beans unannounced – we’ll always dance around revealing the important aspects of the plot as much as we can.

Finally, there’s the video review. While these are generally shortened versions of the text, they come with visual examples of exactly what we’re discussing, and that can be revealing – sometimes more than a reviewer intends, if they miss some small detail in the background when looking for a clip that shows what they need. If you’re truly spoiler-averse, this is where you’ll most likely come across something you haven’t seen before even if you’ve watched all the trailers and previews, because again, that’s the whole point.

In any case, while it’s not often you’ll hear a writer tell you not to read their work, this is one of those times. If you’re worried about being spoiled on minor things for something you’ve already decided to play or watch, I highly recommend that you avoid reviews – beyond checking out the score, at least – until you’ve seen it with your own eyes and extracted every ounce of enjoyment. After that, we hope you’ll come back and talk with us about it.

Dan Stapleton is IGN's Director of Reviews and resident dad joke enthusiast. Follow him on Bluesky (RIP Twitter).

Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the previous entry, I Hope Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Gets A Chance To Be Better.

I spent a lot of time this week trying to think of what this column entry should be about. Then, after a bit, that shifted to wondering what the barrier was. There’s no shortage of distractions so far as world events are concerned, and another eight months of political buffoonery was on the forefront of my mind. But, I eventually realized that it was less about the state of things and more about choice overload bias. (The freeze that comes with too many options.)

And so, with that in mind, I’m going to give you a little watchlist. It’s not curated in the sense that any of the individual pieces make up a whole, it’s just what I’m watching right now and think you should too. Some of it’s currently airing! Other entries are connected to the looming Oscar ceremony. Join me on my little mini-adventure of recommendations.

Shōgun on Hulu

What a beautifully intricate series Shōgun has been. I know historical dramas can be a tough sell for some, but Shōgun is rich in a way that many other shows — historical dramas or otherwise — could only dream of being. The absolute legend that is Hiroyuki Sanada stars in and produces the series, and fought to illustrate a truly authentic Japan, include Japanese crew, and showcase Japanese actors.

So far, the show has been rooted not just in the domestic issues daimyo Yoshii Toranaga and his loyalists face, but the threat posed to all of Japan by Christian colonialism. Somehow, throughout all of that, pirate-turned-hostage John Blackthorn (Cosmo Jarvis) may be the key to saving Toranaga and his camp. (Though some of that camp may not be as loyal as they appear…)

Abbott Elementary on Hulu

No judgment if you’re not on the Abbott Elementary train yet, but I also highly recommend that you get on board with the best sitcom currently on the air. Season 3 hasn’t missed a step, and the supersized 2024 premiere basically gave us an extra episode on the front end. We’re still early on in the season, but shaking up the show’s traditional pairings has worked well for the Abbott crew — a sentiment many sitcoms fail to earn when they try the same. Jacob (Chris Perfetti) and Gregory’s (Tyler James Williams) growing bromance is of particular note this season, and Josh Segarra’s Manny has been a wonderful new addition to the series.

Poor Things on Hulu (March 7)

Both Oscar-nominated films on this list are in contention for my favorite movie of 2023, but Poor Things just happens to be first. A contemporary Frankenstein riff that would make Mary Shelley proud in a million different ways, Poor Things is constantly stunning and endlessly charming. Emma Stone is both thrilling and relatable as Bella Baxter challenges her way through the men in her life. And, not for nothing, the movie is hilarious. “I must go punch that baby” never fails to make me cackle.

Not Dead Yet on Hulu

Not Dead Yet is the only series in Hulu’s history to make me glad for the fact that the streaming platform just starts playing something else after the show you actually chose to watch ends. Gina Rodriguez stars as Nell, a journalist-turned-obituary writer who sees dead people. Somehow, the “sees dead people” bit isn’t even the most interesting part of the show. Instead, it’s used to elevate — and often complicate — Nell’s relationships with those around her. It’s a silly and often thoughtful sitcom that I’m always happy to find a new episode of.

American Fiction (Rent or buy on digital)

I rarely get to go into films completely blind, so American Fiction started off as a treat from the beginning. The movie is Jeffrey Wright at his absolute best — a high bar for an already incredible actor. I don’t want to give you too many plot details, because while it isn’t a film that necessitates going in blind, my experience was better for it and I hope yours will be too. But American Fiction hits the perfect balance between funny and real as it challenges stereotypes, niceties, and misconceptions about how we consume and what we expect from Black art and the artists that create it.

Hazbin Hotel on Prime Video

I’m going to be real with you right now, I literally have no idea how many times I’ve rewatched Hazbin Hotel at this point, and the number of times I have listened to the soundtrack is probably alarming to people who might label themselves as “normal.” But, thankfully, I’m utterly shameless about the things that bring me joy and I will continue to write about this show until my boss forces me to stop. (Hi Scott, please don’t delete this entry! Ok, thank you, byeee!)

I could tell you what Hazbin Hotel is about, or I could tell you that there’s only one season so far, it’s only eight episodes, and they’re all less than 25 minutes long. It’s the easiest binge ever! Ok, I’ll also tell you that it’s about Charlie, the Princess of Hell, trying to help demons be better so they can ascend to heaven and not be slaughtered by the angels’ annual purge. And it’s a musical. And it’s great. Go turn it on now. Do it for Niffty.

If you’ve read the last 10 issues of my Forgotten Gems column, you’ve probably noticed a pattern. I pick a game that may either spark some recognition and you’ll go “oh, yeah – what happened to it?” – or you’ve never heard of the game I’m profiling and you google what year I was born so that you can rest easy that it’s not you, it’s me. Inevitably, the column turns gloomy. An awesome-sounding sequel was planned, but never made. Or, somehow, an entire series of games is no longer accessible to play.

Not today, friends! Today’s Forgotten Gems has a happy ending. As of March 7, 2024, three classic SNES racers are back on the track, broadly available to play on Xbox One, Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Courtesy of Brazilian studio QUByte and retro experts Piko, of Evercade fame, the Top Racer Collection includes the original trio of Top Racer games – Top Racer, Top Racer 2, Top Racer 3000, and an altered version of the original game featuring four new rides that recall other classic racing games, called Top Racer: Crossroads.

But I've Never Heard of Top Racer

If you’re an old-school SNES fan and you’re scratching your head right now because you’ve never heard the name Top Racer before, once again, it’s not you. In 1992, Japanese publisher Kemco -- sometimes referred to by its less sexy corporate name, Kotobuki System -- launched a game with two names: Top Racer, in Japan, and Top Gear in the US and Europe.

Developed by Gremlin Graphics, the team behind the Lotus Turbo Challenge racing games, Top Gear became a surprise hit, selling more than a quarter million units in the west alone (as disclosed by court documents that I’ll get to in a minute). Top Gear predates Nintendo’s own Mario Kart by a few months, but like the SNES mega-hit, it hooked players with impressive Mode 7 graphics and a focus on split-screen multiplayer.

Whether you’re playing alone, with (this is the way), or against a friend, Top Gear – er, Top Racer, let’s just stick with that – displays a horizontally split screen by default. The idea is that you’ll always be able to keep an eye on your biggest rival, but the default setup was no doubt also a way to simplify the overall design and keep technical ambitions in check. Unlike the admittedly smoother-running Mario Kart and F-Zero, Top Racer actually simulates verticality and adds quite a bit of excitement by obscuring the path ahead when you drive up and down hills.

Most of Top Racer is a test of your reflexes. Scan ahead or look at the track mini-map and start turning early or easing up on the gas pedal, all by using the SNES controller’s exclusively digital controls, of course. It's all still very playable -- and fun -- today. But the designers added a few more strategic elements that ensured players would remember Top Racer for many years to come. For one, your car can actually run out of gas if you don’t refuel during longer races – an unusual addition to an arcade racer. But there are two more things that tipped Top Racer into “gem” territory. The first is its nitro system. You get three nitros you can use at any time, to be used strategically to catch up with a slightly faster opponent or to recover after a crash. It’s a commonplace and unremarkable feature today, many Burnouts, Midnight Clubs, and Need for Speeds later, but it added a wonderful new element of strategy, especially in the fierce two-player races against my friends. But Top Racer’s most memorable element, by far, is its music.

When you first start Top Racer and hear the title track, you’ll instantly get it. Composer Barry Leitch might have recycled some of his own tunes from the Lotus Turbo Challenge games, but it’s impossible to forget his heavenly synth arpeggios and glide bass lines even after spending just a few minutes on the track.

"It really was a case of do whatever we can to do get music into the game ASAP. The clock was ticking, and the job needed doing. That’s how the pieces from Lotus 1 & 2 ended up in there. There simply wasn't enough time to write new music, simply take what we had already and jazz it up a bit", said Leitch, in a 2015 interview with Game Developer.

Despite the time pressure placed on the composer, the end result is unforgettable. Hit play on the video embedded above, and you'll understand. I used to just let the game idle on the title screen to put an extra spring in my step for the day. Top Racer has such an iconic sound that Aquiris, another Brazilian studio, enlisted Leitch to score its own homage to the series, 2015's mobile gem, Horizon Chase, as well as its two sequels. A far cry from most racing game soundtracks today, there’s just something intangible, something soothing about Leitch’s tunes that makes racing more enjoyable.

With the success of Top Gear under their belt and selling well in the US, Kemco quickly commissioned a sequel. Top Gear 2 didn’t stray too far from the course set by the original, but added a full-screen single-player display setup, reward economy, day/night and weather effects, and an upgrade system. Fans were ready for more. With the sequel likewise passing the 200k sales milestone in the west, Kemco filed a trademark application for the name. The idea was that Top Gear 2 would be the last game to be called Top Racer in Japan – Kemco had its sights set on a global, recognizable brand name for the ages. And space. Of course, space.

Top Gear 3000 would leave our planet behind with 48 trans-galactic tracks – and an upgrade system with cosmetic changes. And F-Zero style charging strips. And bigger hills and jumps. And branching paths. And a four-player split-screen mode – an oddity on the Super NES as it required an additional multitap splitter to plug in more controllers. Kemco was going all-in, even shelling out extra cash to have the cartridge souped up with a DSP-4 chip. Though Top Gear 3000 is largely forgotten today, it’s notable for being the only commercially available game with the DSP-4 chip.

Kemco even signed on as an early supporter for Nintendo’s forthcoming Ultra 64 console – later redubbed Nintendo 64, bringing on Boss Game Studios to create a polygonal rally racer with realistic physics, known as Top Gear Rally.

Kemco Grinds the BBC's Gears

Who knows what the catalyst was, but three years after Kemco’s trademark filing and with their fourth game on the way, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) took note that a video game series was using the same name as its TV program, Top Gear, first broadcast in 1977. It filed a Notice of Opposition, citing its ownership of the trademark in the field of entertainment motoring and licensed goods. While the burden of proof hinged upon the BBC's past usage of the brand in licensing and whether developer Gremlin Graphics was aware of the other Top Gear, the filing shows clearly that the British TV company was waking up to the world of interactive entertainment -- and possibly looking to go bigger with Top Gear in the future.

To make a long story short, both parties said they had never heard of the "other Top Gear" – don’t scoff, the Top Gear TV show we all know and love didn’t actually happen until it got rebooted by Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman in 2002 – and the registrar’s office ruled in 1999 that Kemco could not register the trademark and ordered a payment of £1,000 to the BBC to offset legal filing costs. That was it. Both companies went back to top-gearing it up in their respective markets, and Kemco used the brand name until 2003 worldwide.

But with the success of the BBC’s rebooted Top Gear TV show and a more aggressive pursuit of becoming a cross-media brand (see: Forza's later inclusion of the BBC Top Gear), Kemco probably felt that it, let’s just say, would like to avoid any Imperial entanglements.

The last Top Gear-branded game, Top Gear: RPM Tuning, quietly launched as just RPM Tuning in the UK. Meanwhile, the BBC kept its end up with casual mobile time-wasters like Top Gear: Donut Dash.

So, it’s back to the name Kemco coined for the first game’s debut in Japan on March 27, 1992: Top Racer. But a great racer by any other name is still a great racer. And despite the pixelated visuals, letterboxing, and digital control limitations, the 16-bit Top Racers still make for a great time -- especially when you team up with a friend. And in addition to different display options (such as zoom modes, CRT-style scan-lines), 2024's Top Racer Collection wisely included a sound test mode for unlimited jukebox fun -- if the tens of thousands of different covers of the title track on YouTube weren't enough to fill your tank.

Where Can You Play it Now

I had toyed with the idea of writing this article last year, with the recommendation to play Horizon Chase Turbo, the closest thing to a widely available Top Racer game at the time. It’s wonderful that the legal wranglings over the series’ name didn’t have more serious consequences. While Piko made the first Top Racer available via one of its Evercade collections a few years ago, the Top Racer Collection is an even bigger step for preservation, ensuring that both console and PC owners can finally revisit these early 3D racers. QUByte even added an online mode and leaderboards and a new custom version of the original Top Racer featuring the four cars below to sweeten the deal.

As for the future of the series, the original (now defunct) team behind Top Gear Rally released a rebranded version called Boss Rally for PC in 1999, but Snowblind’s overlooked Top Gear: Overdrive (yes, from the makers of Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance!) and Saffire’s intriguing Top Gear Rally 2 haven’t resurfaced in over 20 years. If Top Racer can shed the “Gear” name and return for an encore, perhaps there’s hope.

Meanwhile, in addition to being able to play Top Racer 1 through 3000 in a great new collection, the legacy of all these games lives on in other racing game series. The programmers of the original Top Racer – the tiny team of Ritchie Brannan, Simon Blake, and Ash Bennett – have moved on, but seem to have kept one foot on the rumble strip. Since Top Racer, Brannan worked on DiRT: Rally, GRID, and Colin McRae, and Bennett became studio technical director at Sumo Digital and worked on the Forza Horizon series and Team Sonic Racing.

Peer Schneider is a co-founder of IGN Entertainment and first fell in love with racing games when he played Pole Position at a local arcade. He can still hear the muffled words “prepare to qualify” in his head when he closes his eyes.

It says something about the state of a video game series when lots of fans are happy the next game is coming later than expected. That’s what happened this week in the Pokémon community, after Game Freak and The Pokémon Company revealed Pokémon Legends: Z-A is coming to Nintendo Switch in 2025. Many trainers — myself included — let out a huge sigh of relief after learning that Pokémon is taking a much-needed break in 2024, ending a streak that lasted eight consecutive years of new mainline content.

Since 2016, Pokémon’s release schedule has looked like this:

• 2016: Sun & Moon
• 2017: Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon
• 2018: Let’s Go, Pikachu! & Let’s Go, Eevee!
• 2019: Sword & Shield
• 2020: Sword & Shield DLC
• 2021: Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl
• 2022: Legends: Arceus and Scarlet & Violet
• 2023: Scarlet & Violet DLC

It’s been a crazy cadence of video game launches with absolutely no time to breathe, and the signs of unsustainability have been showing for multiple years at this point. 2022 alone saw two hugely ambitious Pokémon games come out of Game Freak. And while I absolutely adore Legends: Arceus’ spin on the Pokémon formula, and I respect Scarlet & Violet for shaking things up in a big way, all of the aspirations and innovations were significantly overshadowed by low-quality graphics and — in Scarlet & Violet’s case — unacceptable technical performance. Scarlet & Violet’s issues brought it to the point where Nintendo shared an apology, which you almost never see from the company. I’ve seen a lot of black-text-on-yellow-background apologies in the last several years but I never expect to see it from Nintendo.

I don’t mean to sound like a Pokémon hater – I love Pokémon, or at least I want to love Pokémon again. But it’s been hard watching Game Freak struggle to transition to home console development during the Switch generation and the way I see it, it’s left with basically two choices: scale the ambition back or take more development time to release fewer games. And given that Pokémon is already describing Legends: Z-A as “an ambitious new entry”, it seems it’s opting for the latter.

Granted, all we know is that Legends: Z-A is coming sometime in 2025. That could very well end up being early in the year (Remember, Legends: Arceus launched in January 2022), and then all the praise I’m giving The Pokémon Company and Game Freak will be moot. An early 2025 release would equal a three-year turnaround since Arceus, which is pretty standard for Game Freak. Gen 5 (2010), Gen 6 (2013), Gen 7 (2016), Gen 8 (2019) and Gen 9 (2022) all had three-year gaps in between. So I’m sincerely hoping the generic 2025 release window and the fact the announcement trailer didn’t actually show any gameplay means the developers and publisher are taking the Scarlet & Violet criticism seriously, and we won’t see Legends: Z-A until later in 2025.

So I’m thrilled Pokémon is taking a break in 2024, and I’m excited that Game Freak is returning to the Legends subseries. But we really know very little about Legends: Z-A, so let’s tackle some other big questions brought on by this announcement.

What Does the “Legends” Branding Actually Mean?

Depending on the day, I sometimes call Pokémon Legends: Arceus my favorite Pokémon game of all time. I fell in love with the revamped focus on catching and collecting Pokémon, and it solidified for me that a Pokémon game revolving around “Gotta catch ‘em all” is more compelling than “I wanna be the very best.” I know that’s an unpopular take, and I understand that the main series isn’t going anywhere, but I was thrilled when Legends: Z-A’s announcement confirmed that Arceus wasn’t just a one-off experiment.

But from the little we know about Z-A, it’s hard to determine if this is really a sequel to Legends: Arceus at all. We know Z-A will take place entirely within the Kalos region’s Lumiose City, and “urban redevelopment” has been teased as Z-A’s theme. Both of those elements are significantly at odds with Legends: Arceus, which was about exploring nature in wide, open areas.

So it’s possible that each entry in the Pokémon Legends series will be its own distinct thing, and the new mechanics I loved in Arceus might not necessarily translate to Z-A. Maybe the Pokémon Legends branding just means a mainline game developed by Game Freak that takes a look at a region years before the modern day Pokémon games, while avoiding the traditional Pokémon formula of gym badges and the Elite Four. Or, maybe Z-A still could incorporate Arceus’ catching mechanics while taking place in the big city. Time will tell but either way, I’m incredibly happy Game Freak is taking yet another crack at approaching Pokémon from a new angle.

What About Unova?

I placed my bet that the next mainline Pokémon game would return to Unova, the setting of Gen 5’s Black & White. Instead, Legends: Z-A is skipping Gen 5 and jumping straight to the region from Gen 6’s X & Y, and in a weird roundabout way giving us the Pokémon Z version we never got. Game Freak is breaking the pattern of its Pokémon remakes and I can’t help but wonder if there is a plan for Gen 5 remakes.

The Pokémon Company outsourced Gen 4 remakes Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl to developer ILCA and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s planning to assign a Black & White remake to a separate studio at some point, ILCA or otherwise. It’s impossible to say if something like that is already in development or not, but I have a good feeling that we will still end up seeing a return to Unova sometime in the next few years.

No, Not Everything Is a Nintendo Switch 2 Hint

We’re only in March and I’m already exhausted from all the Nintendo Switch 2 speculation we’ve endured this year. The internet will seemingly take any little thing and use it to fuel the Switch 2 fire, even in cases where there’s absolutely no reason to.

When it came to the Legends: Z-A trailer, the internet latched onto wording that said Legends: Z-A will launch “simultaneously” worldwide in 2025 for Nintendo Switch “systems”. Some people took this as a hint that Legends: Z-A will release as a cross-gen title on both Switch and Switch 2, and I’d really like to pump the brakes on that.

There’s just no way Nintendo or The Pokémon Company would let any wording confirming Switch 2 slip into its marketing before it has officially announced its next hardware. Nintendo is incredibly careful about its messaging and I assure you this isn’t some slip-up or cryptic hint. And Nintendo always refers to the Switch, OLED, and Lite as the “Nintendo Switch family of systems” or “Nintendo Switch systems”, so that word choice is in no way hinting at unannounced hardware. The Pokémon Twitter account used the exact same wording when talking about Detective Pikachu Returns, which already launched on Nintendo Switch systems last year.

The great detective is back on the case! 🔎 #DetectivePikachuReturns is coming to Nintendo Switch systems on October 6, 2023.https://t.co/OQrBueF6Ap pic.twitter.com/i4aQLAl0ns

— Pokémon (@Pokemon) June 21, 2023

The 2025 release timing really tells us nothing about Nintendo’s next generation plans either way. Pokémon notoriously waits a year or two before transitioning to Nintendo’s new hardware. The 3DS launched in March 2011 and we didn’t see the first mainline 3DS Pokémon games until Fall 2013. For a more recent example, the Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017 and Pokémon didn’t make an appearance until Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! in Fall 2018.

I think the more interesting discussion surrounds what Legends: Z-A’s 2025 release window means for Nintendo’s Fall 2024 release calendar. If recent reports are accurate and Switch 2 isn’t coming until next year, the remainder of Nintendo’s 2024 is looking pretty light. Pokémon is basically always a staple of Nintendo’s holiday lineup and I was expecting nothing different in 2024. But it’s now looking like Pokémon will miss this holiday, leaving me to wonder what Nintendo will fill that gap with. Is it finally time for Metroid Prime 4 or Wind Waker and Twilight Princess? Or will Nintendo pull out something completely new and unexpected? We’ll have to wait and see, but I can tell you for certain Nintendo has at least one unannounced game in its back pocket for this holiday season, and I can’t wait to learn what it is.

What do you think of Pokémon Legends: Z-A? Let us know in the comments.

Logan Plant is IGN's Database Manager, Playlist Editor, and frequent Super Ninfriendo on Nintendo Voice Chat. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

This column contains spoilers for Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix.

Update 3/6/2024: As of today, it appears as if Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender will, indeed, get the chance to get better! Netflix renewed the series for Seasons 2 and 3 at the same time, presumably because the eternally sweet Gordon Cormier ain't gettin' any younger! I, like most of you, will be waiting on the edge of my seat for a Toph casting announcement, but I assume we won't have that or release dates for either season for some time.

There are objectively too many shows. It’s a sentence that sucks to write, because it’s nice that so many people are getting the opportunity to make the art they care about, but there’s just objectively too many. It’s too much even for me, and my literal job is TV. I present this very clear fact upfront because I know that what I’m about to say is going to sound a little funny in our current landscape.

I did not like Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, and, despite that, I still very much hope that it gets renewed and gets the opportunity to be better. Is that a fair thing to say when there is so much damn television? Probably not. But what about life is fair, anyway?

Let me explain.

I don’t like the Netflix adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I was concerned when the original series’ creators left, but wanted to give the show the benefit of the doubt all the same. Then those silly Game of Thrones comments happened and, well… listen, I wish I could tell you that my (typically) cynical ass knew the graves were dug then and there, but I still wanted this dang show to work. Unfortunately, though I am thrilled for the folks who managed to connect with it, my benefit of the doubt was unwarranted. The series’ edgier approach to the Avatar was frustrating at best and a complete tonal misfire at worst, but there’s still hope in there. And, after all, isn’t hope the entire core of this series?

My insistence that the show see a second season is largely rooted in those dang kids. Mostly the whole cast, to be honest. While the middle episodes aren’t without their pacing problems and tonal struggles, when the kids are given the opportunity to be their characters, the work really shines. Gordon Cormier (Aang), Kiawentiio (Katara), Ian Ousley (Sokka) and Dallas Liu (Zuko) were all made for their respective roles, so credit where it’s due for casting directors Anya Colloff, Michael V. Nicolo and Michelle Olivia Seamon. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here begging for more episodes of a show that I really did not care for.

The premiere and the finale are both rough, but so much of that can be attributed to the live-action adaptation not knowing if it wants to be The Last Airbender or Game of Thrones and the complete lack of understanding that it does not need to try to be both.

The adult animation era notwithstanding, there’s kind of a near-universal habit of looking down on animation as cutesy or twee, or just for kids. Sentiments that all sound insane when you look at the original The Last Airbender series. Not only did many people find the series as adults, but it also introduced a ton of kids to heavy themes that it had absolutely no trouble balancing with its light-hearted nature. Sokka cracking jokes at weird times works when he hasn’t just been looking down at the scorched corpses of his fallen brethren not thirty seconds before. But if you’re gonna have him mourning the loss of people he connected with and staring at their dead bodies, you’re kinda obligated to leave him somber for a minute. If you haven’t watched the series yet, what I’ve just described is, regrettably, not a hypothetical but instead one of the last scenes of the finale.

The thing is, if given the choice between dead bodies or Sokka being funny, if you’re making an Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation, the road you have to choose is Sokka being funny! That’s not to say the series can’t or shouldn’t grow or take risks, but individual scenes have to make decisions on which path they’re taking. The more adult themes aren’t frustrating in and of themselves — I watched the Murder Archie show for the gods’ sakes! (RIP, Riverdale, I miss your mess) — and horror is one of my favorite genres. The problem is that if Nickelodeon can figure out how to balance weighty stories with emotional heart 20 years ago, then it’s legit bonkers that a Netflix show with crazy resources struggles to do the same.

I’m here writing this dang column because I believe the Netflix series can achieve that balance if given the opportunity. Do I think live-action showrunner Albert Kim and the undoubtedly small army of Netflix executives that meddled with the final product should have listened to original creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko in the first place? Sure. But they didn’t, so I hope the critical response to Season 1 helps nudge them in the right direction when it comes to Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2, if we’re lucky enough to have it.

And, not for nothing, but I will not have a normal, adult reaction if I am robbed of more Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Iroh. Iroh is, perhaps, the only solid example of the show matching heavier themes with the source material’s warmer nature. Of course, I miss the animated series’ more lighthearted Uncle! Still, there is a richness to his story in the live-action adaptation that seems to really hit the sweet spot when it comes to updating the original story. He’s still kind and warm, but he’s also haunted. We get a more intricate picture of how he came to be the most lovable character in the series. And, lo and behold, we got that picture without needing to see a single child burnt alive.

Amelia is the entertainment Streaming Editor here at IGN. She's also a film and television critic who spends too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There may be cheeseburgers involved. Follow her across social @ThatWitchMia

One of the big announcements from this year’s Pokémon Presents was a new, mobile Pokémon Trading Card Game, which comes as a big surprise, given Pokémon already has a game where you can collect cards and play online called Pokémon Trading Card Game Live.

Unlike the newly announced Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, TCG Live was released in 2023 on desktop and mobile, but its lackluster quality has earned it both a 2.8/5 star rating on Apple’s App Store (as of this writing) and the ire of Pokémon card players everywhere. But while Pokémon TCG Pocket does look attractive — with its gorgeous, immersive card art, and slick animations — it’s actually not the game the Pokémon TCG community needs right now. What we need is a functional digital client that fully captures the real-life tabletop game and not a watered down App Store game version emulating Marvel Snap.

Exhaustingly, up until 2023, the main way to play Pokémon TCG digitally was through an official client, Pokémon Trading Card Game Online, which was serviceable but showing many signs of its advanced age. (In hindsight, we didn’t know how good we had it.) Fans were initially excited when a replacement was finally announced in the form of Pokémon TCG Live, but it was so riddled with issues that it had us begging for the 12-year-old client back. It’s been a real Mankey’s Paw situation!

The digital card game space has evolved dramatically over the years, with Marvel Snap in particular setting a new standard that other developers appear eager to chase. Between Snap’s many awards and millions of dollars in revenue, it’s easy to see why. From the announcement trailer, Pokémon TCG Pocket seems to have been built in the same mold, a “free-to-start” game where you collect cards and challenge other players to quick and breezy battles. Given the Pokémon TCG is one of the most popular tabletop card games in the world, it seemed inevitable The Pokémon Company would get in on this trend, but it seems to have come at the expense of it’s pre-existing Pokémon TCG app that allows you to play the full game, or at least that’s how this competitive Pokémon TCG player sees it.

While we don't know for sure whether Pocket was developed at the expense of Live, it would certainly explain the lack of polish to the latter. That kind of bad optics comes at a time when the competitive Pokémon TCG landscape is already dealing with a host of other issues. Top among them, the increasing popularity of the game has far outgrown its current capacity, leading to major tournaments selling out in minutes and leaving many players rightfully frustrated. If only there were a quality digital version capable of hosting tournaments online to help alleviate the issue…

Having a fully developed, high quality Pokémon TCG client is important for reasons beyond just being able to play the game online. It’s how many new players first discover the game, pro players rely on it to practice, and content creators stake their wellbeing on it because it’s how they showcase the game on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. But when the only option available is as underwhelming as Live, it only serves to drive people away to other, better online card games such as Magic: The Gathering Arena or Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel.

Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh!, that’s a card game that has the best of both worlds. A flashy version of the full game in Master Duel and a simpler version in Duel Links. What Yu-Gi-Oh! has that Pokémon doesn’t is one of their games doesn’t completely eclipse the other in quality. They’re two different yet equally valid ways to enjoy the game.

Not all reactions to Pokémon TCG Pocket from the competitive Pokémon TCG scene have been negative. Pokémon TCG tournament caster and YouTuber Frosted Caribou posted on social media, “This app could be our TCG savior,” and later responded to a comment with, “Competitive players are sometimes way too quick to dismiss anything that isn’t ‘true TCG.’ If they supported bridging the gap between collectors and players more there are huge opportunities to grow the game and create fun and healthy playgroups for so many more people.”

That’s a fair point. At first glance, Pokémon TCG Pocket does seem like it’ll have a strong appeal to fans who aren’t necessarily looking to go pro, and it’s easy to see it has great potential to grow the casual, collector side of the hobby. Even if Pocket doesn’t let you play using all of the rules like with Live, its quality can still entice new players and act as a starting point before they dive into the full card game.

To be clear, I’m not knocking Pokémon TCG Pocket. Aside from issues with the “free-to-start” model, it looks like a fun, accessible way to enjoy the Pokémon TCG. It has an impressive amount of cool features, all executed with sky-high production value. It’s clear to see that it was made by people who love Pokémon cards, and that they put a generous amount of time, passion, and effort into it – and probably a Wailord-sized pile of money.

All Pokémon TCG players want is to be able to say the same thing about Pokémon TCG Live.