Author: Game Infliction

Blindfolded Mario 64 Speedrunner Seconds Away From Heartbreak With Invalid Record-Pace Attempt

The moment of tension one feels when they realize they’re closing in on a record run is palpable. Doubly so if the competitor is a blindfolded speedrunner who can’t see the chat telling him that his webcam is off.

Last week, as spotted by GamesRadar, speedrunner Bubzia was working on beating the world record for a blindfolded 70-star run in Super Mario 64. It’s a record he set himself last June at one hour, 25 minutes, and 11 seconds. He’d spent days — 72, at the time of this incident — trying to topple his own record. And on February 10, while on good pace to break his record, Bubzia’s webcam shut off.

Bubzia had been having some difficulties with his webcam before the run started. “That’s a new one, dude,” he said in a run prior to the big one, where his webcam turned off about one minute and 34 seconds in.

The heartbreaker in question would happen after, at 23 minutes and 59 seconds into a really solid run. You can check out the YouTube VOD of his run to see the chat, in real-time, react. “This could be the funniest WR,” one person in chat said.

The facecam is crucial because it’s required for the run to be valid. On the Speedrun.com rules and regulations, it specifically states: “The player must be visibly devoid of sight during the gameplay, i.e. something must be covering the eyes.” Ergo, if you couldn’t verify Bubzia had his eyes covered the entire time, the run would not qualify.

Having a back-up of some kind, like a notification, might be a thought. But the second category-specific rule says runners can’t have any assistance from other people. This includes hints from a Discord call or text-to-voice chat. After the first webcam failure, Bubzia confirmed he had “everything disabled” to alert him in case of a failure, and had received multiple Discord DMs trying to catch his attention while running.

For some viewers, it might be agonizing to watch someone run a game for over an hour, unaware their attempt has been invalid since the 24-minute mark. Bubzia’s chat even leaned into the irony, hoping for the runner to not set a world record, to avoid the heartbreak when the blindfold came off.

So in that way, it may have been a relief that Bubzia’s time came in a few seconds behind the world record. The pace clock concluded at 1:26:09, almost a full minute behind Bubzia’s standing record.

“If this would have been world record, I would have cried,” Bubzia said, after taking off his blindfold and realizing the facecam had been off. “Dude, I would have quit SM64, man.”

You can follow more attempts from Bubzia, whose facecam is currently working at the time of this writing, on his Twitch here. And for more on speedrunning, check out our Speedrun video series of devs reacting to speedruns of their own games.

Image credit: @Bubzia1.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer says games journalism has too much “what do they call it? Search engine optimization or something like that?”

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer would like to know if video games journalism is OK. He is concerned that the “whole space is gonna go away or be corrupted by things”. He mourns the heyday of magazines, and is bemused by this “SEO” malarkey he keeps hearing about. Much like a Dickensian child holding out a bowl for more gruel, he wants to know if there’s still a “path” for “people with a real honest voice”.

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Armored Core 6 for PS5 Drops to $20 in Amazon and Best Buy’s Presidents’ Day Sales

Presidents’ Day marks one of the first big sale events of the year, and if you’ve been looking to save on video games there’s been a fantastic variety on sale to look through. One of our favorite video game deals at the moment is on Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon for PS5, which is down to just $20 at Amazon and Best Buy.

This marks a 67% price drop from its $59.99 list price and a return to its lowest price yet, according to price tracker camelcamelcamel. If you’ve been hoping to dive into its masterful world of mechs, now’s your chance to do it and save some cash in the process.

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon for $20

If you’re still on the fence about adding this game to your collection, it’s worth noting that we had a lot of praise for it in our review. IGN’s Mitchell Saltzman said, “Armored Core 6 doesn’t look to reinvent the bipedal legs of the mech action genre, but it does update, refine, and polish them to an aggressive shine.” He also mentions that it’s “a welcome return of a classic mecha series.”

If you’re looking for even more game deals available during this sale event, have a look through our roundup of the best video game deals to shop during Presidents’ Day sales. Right now some of the best offerings can be found at Best Buy, including discounts on big releases like Metaphor: ReFantazio, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and more.

To see even more gaming deals, make sure to check out our individual roundups of the best PlayStation deals, the best Xbox deals, and the best Nintendo Switch deals to see the latest and greatest discounts for each platform. For an overall look at the highlights for each console, have a look at our breakdown of the best video game deals.

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.

Review: WARRIORS: Abyss (Switch) – Middling Musou With A Dash Of Diablo & Hades

Not Abyssmal.

During Sony’s February 2025 State of Play presentation, the big shadow drop was Koei Tecmo’s Warriors: Abyss, which offers a low-budget, roguelite take on the popular Warriors hack ‘n’ slash formula. The good news is that this genre hybrid feels like both halves fit perfectly together—the mindlessness of the combat mixed with the brief run-focused nature of roguelite action is so good that it almost feels hard to believe that the team never thought to produce something like this earlier. The bad news is that its struggles with repetition keep it from being anywhere near as addictive as roguelikes such as Dead Cells or Slay the Spire. Luckily, Warriors: Abyss still proves itself to be a worthwhile new entry in the series, but only just.

Warriors: Abyss begins with you being summoned by an impish little god named Enma, the king of Hell, who was recently deposed when an ancient evil being named Gouma was released and took over the land of the dead. Eager to reclaim his throne, Enma enlists the stars of the Warriors franchise to fight off Gouma’s forces and ultimately send the creature back where it came from. Every now and then, Enma will pop up with a bit more of lore or some snarky quip, but there’s not much more to the storyline beyond this basic setup.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Star Wars: The Old Republic Jedi Revan Statue Revealed by Diamond Select Toys

Darth Revan may well be the most popular Star Wars character yet to appear in a live-action project. Star Wars collectors looking to add to their Revan shrine will soon have a new option, as Diamond Select Toys reveals the Star Wars: The Old Republic Jedi Revan Gallery PVC Statue.

Check out the slideshow gallery below for an exclusive first look at this dynamic Star Wars collectible:

This piece is essentially a sequel to DST’s previous Darth Revan statue. It’s specifically inspired by Revan’s appearance in Star Wars: The Old Republic and depicts the character wielding a single purple lightsaber and white Jedi robes.

The Star Wars: The Old Republic Jedi Revan Gallery PVC Statue is designed at 1:8 scale and measures about 10 inches tall. Like the rest of the Star Wars Gallery line, it’s designed to be a more budget-friendly option for collectors and carries an MSRP of $80.

The Jedi Revan statue will be released in Fall 2025. Preorders will open on the Gentle Giant Ltd. website and other retailers on Friday, February 21.

You can also currently preorder DST’s Darth Revan statue, which is seeing wider release in 2025 after originally debuting as a Diamond Select Toys/Gamestop exclusive.

While you’re at it, why not check out the many Star Wars collectibles available on the IGN Store?

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion gets a whole gamejam dedicated to Persuasion Pie, co-hosted by a Don’t Nod developer

Among the dorkiest aspects of Bethesda’s winningly dorky The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the persuasion wheel minigame – also known as Persuasion Pie, also known as the Wheedlin’ Roundabout, also known as the Dartboard of Indoctrination. (Maybe not so much the last two.) This saw you choosing methods of gaining NPC affection from a disc with quadrants labelled “Admire”, “Joke”, “Coerce” and “Boast”, each of which elicits a different response previewed by the NPC’s gurnishly changing expression.

You have to choose all four options at least once per round, and the underlying “pie” rotates every time you pick one. The underlying segments are partially filled in to show how much they’ll affect the NPC’s opinion, for better or worse. The idea, then is to match responses that have a positive effect to the largest chunks of pie, by picking them in the right order. If you think all that sounds incredibly overwrought and an offence to the character writer’s art, then you are clearly not Don’t Nod Montreal’s Colin McInerney or one of the other hosts of Wheeljam 2025, a game creation jam dedicated to Bethesda’s ole Tart Of Cajolement. Here is a trailer.

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Overwatch 2 Dev Blizzard Welcomes Marvel Rivals Competition, Says It’s Never Faced Another Game ‘So Similar to the One We’ve Created’

Marvel Rivals was, from the moment it was revealed, compared to Overwatch. Taken at face value, Marvel Rivals is remarkably similar to Blizzard’s game; while Marvel Rivals uses Marvel heroes and villains for its playable characters, it is, like Overwatch, a competitive multiplayer hero shooter with some remarkably similar mechanics and gameplay systems. Both Marvel Heroes and Overwatch 2 are free-to-play, monetized as live services, and lean on the addition of new characters to keep things feeling fresh.

Marvel Rivals has enjoyed explosive popularity since launching in December, and it is speculated that this has come at the cost of interest in Overwatch 2. Blizzard’s game, according to the current narrative, is dwindling as NetEase’s Marvel Rivals gobbles up its players.

In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller discussed the new reality Blizzard finds itself in, with Marvel Rivals now out in the wild and attracting tens of millions of players.

“We’re obviously in a new competitive landscape that I think, for Overwatch, we’ve never really been in before, to this extent where there’s another game that’s so similar to the one that we’ve created,” Keller said.

You’d think this would be a bad thing for Overwatch, then, but Keller called the situation “exciting,” and even said it was “really great” to see Marvel Rivals take ideas established by Overwatch in a “different direction.”

Still, Keller admitted Marvel Rivals’ success had forced a change in attitude within Blizzard when it comes to Overwatch 2, saying: “this is no longer about playing it safe.”

To that end, Blizzard has announced radical changes coming to Overwatch 2 in 2025. While the roadmap ahead includes much of what you’d expect to see in terms of new content, the core gameplay itself will see a seismic shift, including the additions of hero perks and the return of loot boxes.

All eyes will be on Overwatch 2 to see if these changes spark a resurgence in interest. We’re now nearly nine years out from the debut of Overwatch in 2016, and two-and-a-half from the launch of Overwatch 2. And while Blizzard does not make Overwatch player numbers public, we can see concurrent player numbers on Steam are as low as they’ve ever been since Overwatch 2 launched on Valve’s platform in 2023, with a 37,046 concurrent player peak over the last 24 hours.

Marvel Rivals, meanwhile, remains a top 10 most-played game on Steam, with a 310,287 concurrent player peak over the last 24 hours.

Overwatch 2 still has a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating on Steam. Indeed, in August 2023, Overwatch 2 became the worst user-reviewed game on Steam ever. Most of the negative reviews focused on monetization after Blizzard was heavily-criticised for forcing its premium predecessor to update into a free-to-play sequel, rendering the original Overwatch unplayable, back in 2022. Overwatch 2 subsequently endured a number of controversies including the cancellation of its long-awaited PvE Hero mode — the one feature, players said, that justified the sequel’s existence.

IGN has loads more on Marvel Rivals, including the developer’s clarification on datamining, and thoughts on the possibility of a Nintendo Switch 2 version.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

I found the best Presidents’ Day deals on gaming rigs, including $900 off a RTX 4090 laptop and more

Presidents’ Day brings a wave of discounts on gaming laptops, desktops, and more, making it a great time to upgrade or invest in a new machine. Whether you’re after raw performance, high refresh rates, or a balance of power and portability, there are plenty of options available at lower-than-usual prices.

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Mortal Kombat 1 Dataminer Discovers Animations for Hara-Kiri Fatalities — and They Could Be Coming as Quitalities

A Mortal Kombat 1 dataminer has unearthed what looks like compelling evidence that the gory fighting game will get Hara-Kiri Fatalities in the form of Quitalities.

Redditor InfiniteNightZ published a video, below, showing off what look like Hara-Kiri Fatalities in Mortal Kombat 1. A Hara-Kiri finisher, first introduced in 2004’s Mortal Kombat: Deception, sees the defeated player cause their own death with a self-Fatality.

Hara-Kiri & Exit Animations (- Liu Kang / Conan)
byu/InfiniteNightZ inMortalKombat

What’s interesting here is that InfiniteNightZ found Hara-Kiri animations for recently released DLC characters, such as Ghostface, adding credence to the speculation that they will be added to Mortal Kombat 1 in a future update rather than left on the cutting room floor. “After seeing that they’re adding it to the downloaded roster now, I think it’s highly possible,” InfiniteNightZ said.

InfiniteNightZ then suggested the Hara-Kiri animations could arrive as Quitalities, given that’s how they’re referenced in the game’s code. Quitalities are quick-fire finishers that trigger when a player quits a multiplayer match, and have been in previous games in the series. “They are listed as Quitalities, there’s still hope,” InfiniteNightZ said of the animations.

High-profile Mortal Kombat 1 dataminer Interloko found additional Hara-Kiri animations, after InfiniteNightZ’s find was made public.

Of course, this may all amount to nothing, and it’s worth noting that neither NetherRealm nor publisher Warner Bros. Games has announced Quitalities for Mortal Kombat 1.

Mortal Kombat 1 recently enjoyed a resurgence with the addition of a secret fight with Floyd, the pink ninja, and the community-driven effort to work out his unlock conditions. Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat 1 fans have the T-1000 guest character to look forward to, and potentially more DLC to come, although NetherRealm has yet to confirm that.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Toby Fox Shares Development Update On Deltarune Chapter 3 And 4

“Still console testing”.

Developer Toby Fox is back with another update on the much-anticipated Deltarune Chapter 3 and 4, inching toward an as-yet unknown release date that is still promised to come later this year.

In short, console testing is still ongoing. Our assumption here is that the Switch is included in these tests, but Fox has not specified this in the BlueSky post. Instead, he merely states that testing has yet to begin on the PS5, with a previous post stating that PlayStation trophies will need to be tested at some point due to their mandatory requirement.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com