Sunday, September 30, 2018
Nintendo reveals it invented “Bowsette” before the Internet did
This month's major Nintendo Direct video presentation included a reveal of another New Super Mario Bros. game—a Switch port of its last Wii U installment—with one curious twist. It includes a few new playable characters, and one of those, Toadette, can don a crown power-up and turn into a Toadette-Peach hybrid dubbed Peachette.
Fans didn't take long to imagine what might happen if other Mario series characters put that same crown on and transformed into Princess Peach hybrids, particularly Bowser. Thus, Bowsette was born in a wild flurry of detailed fan art (and we thank NintendoLife for this SFW gallery of examples). But as Nintendo itself revealed on Friday, fans' creation wasn't all that original... as Nintendo had already toyed with the idea itself.
So in THE ART OF SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY that came out in Japan today, there's an scrapped concept of Bowser taking over Peach's body with his own version of Cappy.
— Nao (@Sakusuru) September 28, 2018
Kind of surreal how there could have been an "official" Bowsette long before the fan one took over the internet. pic.twitter.com/gSMOqNDKKf
A new official book from Nintendo, titled The Art of Super Mario Odyssey, premiered in Japan this week and offers a deep dive into concept art for the colorful 2017 game. On Friday, one of the book's buyers noticed a comic-styled storyboard within the book and posted the discovery on Twitter, as shown above. This hints at an idea that didn't make it into the final game: that Odyssey's primary gimmick, which allows Mario to become other creatures by hitting them with his "Cappy" hat, would also be used by Bowser.
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Forza Horizon 4 is the best open-world driving game you can buy
Microsoft
After six years spanning three previous installments across two consoles, it's fair to say the Forza Horizon franchise is well established. This concept should sound familiar by now: an open-world driving game you can play solo or online, with a traveling music festival in the background. It's the work of Playground Games, built on the bones of the Forza game engine developed by Turn 10 for the even longer-running Forza Motorsport series. So far, the Horizon festival has visited Colorado, the Mediterranean, and Australia. And in Forza Horizon 4, it's Britain's turn.
If the developers at Playground were lazy, they could have just dusted off the last game and built a new map for it, replacing Down Under with the land soon to be known as Brexitopia. But the past two years have involved more than just building a new map. There's new online functionality with up to 72 players in a session. In addition to dynamic weather and days that turn into nights, now there are seasonal transitions, each of which brings new challenges for you to complete. There is a complete and welcome absence of loot boxes or microtransactions—something that will no doubt come as welcome news. And we even get a guest appearance from at least one other blockbuster game franchise.
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DOJ v. Google: Microsoft invested in OpenAI over fears of falling behind Google; Kevin Scott said he was "very, very worried" in a 2019 email to Satya Nadella (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg : DOJ v. Google: Microsoft invested in OpenAI over fears of falling behind Google; Kevin Scott said he was “very, very worried”...
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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Andrew Tarantola / Engadget : An adapted excerpt from the book “Your Computer Is on Fire”, on how voice assistants like Siri and Alexa al...
