Link Roundup 2/24/22

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Nicole Clark at Polygon wants us to know of a free video card game based on Pokemon that isn’t derived from the physical CCG! It’s called Pokemon Crystal League, it’s free on itch.io, and it’s instead inspired by the first portion of Inscryption. As with anything so directly related to a Nintendo property, you should probably look into getting this before it’s too late-assuming it even makes it to press time!

Also at Polygon: Cian Maher’s 14 “most exciting” games of the summer, which contains a Gloomhaven computer game update, Super Mario Strikers, Capcom Fighting Collection, and Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course.

At CBR, Gina notes evidence that the character of Magil in Chrono Cross is actually Magus from Chrono Trigger incognito, something fans had long suspected.

Back once again to the crossover fighter genre. Zack Zwiezen at Kotaku looks at WB’s Multiversus and asks, with some justification, if all pop culture is merging into a thick homogeneous paste. It is, after all, a game in which The Iron Giant can team up with Velma from Scooby-Doo to fight against Batman and Tom & Jerry. Space Jam: A New Legend certainly seems to imply WB is heading in that direction.

D. Hardawar at Engadget tells us that EVE Online can now be played streaming with just a web browser and a strong-enough internet connection. The new format is called EVE Anywhere. I mean, why not? The game is already sometimes derisively refereed to as a spreadsheet simulator, so why not build Google Docs support into it too?

At NintendoLife, Liam Doolan points to a Twitter post from the account of Sonic Mania developer Headcannon, where they state, while some of their work appears on the upcoming Sonic Origins, they did not directly work on it themselves.

Also from Liam Doolan: Nintendo files a patent for a method to fight online cheating and software modification. We take the view here that all software patents are bad by definition, but at least they’re trying to do something about cheating in their games? While the article has an illustration from a Splatoon game, there is actually nothing to say which games will utilize this technique.

While we’re talking about software patents, Sony got one for adding trophy support to classic games. Owen S. God at Polygon says that feature is coming to the rerelease of Syphon Filter on Playstation Plus, and, presumably, to other games afterward. (I wonder if the RetroArch achievements server counts as prior art here?)

Ryan Dinsdale, a freelancer working for IGN (hey! hire him!), tell us that Marcus Nebelong at Dreams developer Media Molecule has recreated the Unreal Engine 5 train station demo in that software.

Finally, from way over on Video Games Chronicle, Jordan Middler mentions that Xbox S sales in Japan exceeded PlayStation 5 sales last week. It’s the first time something like this has happened in eight years! It seems likely that the limited number of PS5s available to be sold might explain the difference. The PS5 still has a higher install base in Japan compared to the Series S, by 8-to-1, but in the past year the Series S has exceeded the entire lifetime sales of the Xbox Series X. Since the release of the original Xbox back in the PS2/Gamecube era, only 2.3 million units have been sold across the entire line, most of them being sales of the 360.