Issue at Hand
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The Star Wars universe is expanding — even in comic books

Star Wars has a long history with comic books — in fact, the very first Star Wars comics debuted before the very first Star Wars movie hit theaters. Issue at Hand is Polygon’s webseries about the weird world of comics, and today’s episode is all about the history of Star Wars comics: how Star Wars may have saved the industry in the ‘70s, and how the comics industry helped give Star Wars a huge resurgence in the ‘90s. More than that, we also talk about the fantastic crop of current Star Wars comics that are contributing to the new Star Wars expanded universe. Thanks to the Lucasfilm story group, they’re just as canonical as the new Star Wars movies. Want to learn even more about the fascinating, stranger side of comics? Catch up with every previous episode of Issue at Hand in our...
Video
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We asked Google about Stardew Valley on PS4 and Xbox One

This week’s SEO Play came out on Monday as usual, but I was not able to write about it, because I was lost in Stardew Valley. Yes, I did manage to escape my corporate chains here at Polygon, and I immediately fled to that place where I felt safest, most at home: the pastoral wonderland of Stardew Valley. There I toiled for hours on my sweet parsnip farm, building relationships with the people around me. It was a dream come true! But then I was brutally taken from my simple home and dragged back the the Big City, to work for The Man! They said I had to write this blog post, to make sure that everyone else knows that you can play Stardew Valley on consoles now. Oh, and lots of other things too. Is fertilizer worth it? And is there an end? I answer all these questions and more,...
Video
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Messing up some space dragons in EarthNight

In a world where dragons took over Earth, one girl and one man in space must punch them in the eyes. So I gather from EarthNight, a roguelike runner where you launch yourself from dragon to dragon, running down their winding spines before poking them aggressively. The goal is to eventually reach Earth’s surface to end this dragon plague once and for all. Each dragon is procedurally generated, and contains multitudes of monsters, platforms, and collectibles. According to the developers, each dragon has 125 potential layouts. You’ll see a few different kinds of dragons in this video. You’ll also notice that the game is challenging as heck. Even when we had what we thought was a good run — well, you’ll see. In this gameplay video, captured at PlayStation Experience, we conquer a few...
CoolGames Inc
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CoolGames Inc Animated: A visual novel about dating every state in the union

We here at CoolGames Inc love dating sims — but why do they limit us to dating humans (or, more rarely, pidgeons)? Indeed, why not take the dating sim genre to its logical conclusion: dating all 50 of these beautiful United States? In this week’s CoolGames Inc animation, we’ve enlisted the help of artist Angelica Maria Lopez to bring a select few US states to life as the beautiful anime characters we’ve always known them to be — and the results are stunning. Also featured in this clip: Waypoint’s Austin Walker, visual novel expert, and the perfect partner to help us really nail the “patriotic eroge” vibe. Want to listen to the full episode? Check out the full-length podcast below, and remember to subscribe to CoolGames Inc on iTunes or via RSS for future episodes! For more CoolGames...
Video
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You can play Atari games inside Minecraft

YouTube personality SethBling has emulated the Atari 2600 inside Minecraft. It’s a clever use of the game’s command blocks, which act as the brains of the operation. But don’t get too excited. While SethBling has provided a tool to load Atari ROMs into Minecraft, once they’re in there you’re only going to be playing at around 60 frames per... four hours. Instead, think of his project as a tremendous way to explain how games are made. SethBling has assembled an array of more than 2,000 command blocks in his design. The way he has them configured, they read stone and dirt as either ones or zeros. When an Atari game is pushed into Minecraft it resolves itself as a 4 kilo-block chunk of land, a three-dimensional representations of raw game code. It proves to be a remarkable visual...
Video
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Look at this fresh, funny take on card-based roguelikes

Recently at PlayStation Experience we played through a demo of Loot Rascals. The roguelike tribute to retro sci-fi films opens with one of the most charming cutscenes of all time. In Loot Rascals, you loot cards from fallen enemies and arrange them on a grid. The layout of the cards will change what powers your character has. And of course, when you die, enemies will loot you. One of the cool things about the game is that death and regeneration — a staple of the roguelike — has an in-world justification. There’s some sort of wacky hostile alien force living on the planet that wants you to keep killing monsters. Every time you die, she screws you right back together and sends you back into the fray. Oh, but without your card collection. Sorry. Loot Rascals will be released in early 2017...
Video
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Car Boys: Destroying a motorcycle from the inside out

If you’ve been keeping up with Car Boys, the episodic video series in which myself and Griffin McElroy play BeamNG.Drive wrong to devastating results, you know this: it’s about wheels. Previously, though, we’ve limited ourselves to four per vehicle — sometimes going down to three wheels when the Pigeon is involved. This week, the training wheels are coming off: we are officially unveiling our first-ever two-wheeled vehicle, and — without giving too much away — we quickly learn that these wheels, the wheels contained on the sport bike? These are special wheels.
Issue at Hand
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The one simple reason that Superman was such a dick in the ’60s

One of the biggest things that sets American comics apart from, say, French or Japanese comics is the dominance of the superhero genre — and the long-standing American perception that comic books, regardless of their subject, are not suitable reading for adults. Today, on Issue at Hand, Polygon’s show about the past, present and future of comic books, we (and by we, I mean I, your comic book expert) cover one of the biggest reasons that American comics are the way they are: the Comics Code. Why were comics in the ’60s so silly? Why were comics in the ’80s so dark? What’s that little white box on all my old comics? Was there really a 1972 comic called Bizzare Sex #1 with the cover story “The Giant Penis That Invaded New York?” Yes. Yes, there was.
Video
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This Titanfall 2 gauntlet run is amazing

Titanfall 2 player “Deadlokked” has made the game’s gauntlet — an early-game training level that teaches players how to wall run, slide and shoot like a Titanfall pilot — something of a joke. While some of us are struggling (and failing) to run the gauntlet in thirty-something seconds to unlock an achievement, Deadlokked makes a sub-18-second run look effortless. Even developer Respawn was impressed. Deadlokked’s method for dominating Titanfall 2’s gauntlet involves using the EPG-1 energy gun to take out enemies and boosting well past 50 kph with the impact of frag grenades. Despite how effortless and, well, perfect this attempt looks, Deadlokked says there’s still room to improve on the run. You can check out Deadlokked’s progress on YouTube, which includes an earlier run that takes...
News
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Six more Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered maps drop next week

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered will get six more multiplayer maps for free on Dec. 13, publisher Activision confirmed today. Next week’s downloadable content release will bring the total of multiplayer maps to 16. Including in the package are the multiplayer maps Bloc, Countdown, Pipeline, Showdown, Strike and Wet Work, which you can see in action in the new trailer above. The Modern Warfare Remastered DLC will also include two additional game modes: Gun Game and Hardpoint. Those game modes were introduced in Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2, respectively. Modern Warfare Remastered players will also get a Christmas-themed map variation, Winter Crash, as part of the free content release. Players will get access to a “24/7 Winter Crash playlist” on Dec. 20. Call of Duty:...
TV
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Watch Shigeru Miyamoto and The Roots play the Super Mario Bros. theme

Banjo enthusiast and game designer Shigeru Miyamoto appeared on tonight’s episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon primarily to help promote the release of Super Mario Run and hype up the launch of the Nintendo Switch. But he also made some time to sit in with The Tonight Show house band The Roots to pluck a familiar tune: the unmistakable Super Mario Bros. theme. It’s a pretty straightforward rendition — though host Jimmy Fallon joined in to freestyle on the Question Block — but it’s still cool to see Miyamoto and Questlove on the same stage playing together. Miyamoto and Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé attended The Tonight Show in advance of Super Mario Run’s launch and to give us our first live look at The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild playable on a Nintendo...
Video
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Nex Machina is an explosive spiritual successor to Smash TV and Robotron

Resogun and Super Stardust developer Housemarque revealed its newest twin-stick shoot 'em up, Nex Machina, at this year's PlayStation Experience. Co-developed with Robotron: 2084 and Defender creator Eugene Jarvis, the PlayStation 4 action game spotlights the old-school, addictive arcade game design strengths of Housemarque when applied to a familiar — but much faster paced — formula. Nex Machina plays like a blend of Resogun and Smash TV, the latter of which was co-created by Jarvis and Mark Turmell. While Smash TV (and Robotron before it) often forced players to stay constantly on their heels, running away from and gunning down waves of enemies, Nex Machina lets players be much more aggressive. As you can see in the five-minute gameplay video above, there's still the feeling of...
Video
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Check out Crash Bandicoot's PlayStation 4 remaster in action

The first three Crash Bandicoot games are coming to PlayStation 4 in remastered form as part of Activision and Vicarious Visions' Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy collection. The remaster, which includes the original Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot: Warped, will be released in 2017. Vicarious Visions worked with some of the original level geometry provided by Crash Bandicoot developer Naughty Dog, game director Dan Tanguay told Polygon at this weekend's PlayStation Experience, but the remaster involved a lot of work creating all-new assets. The team at Vicarious Visions worked hard to recreate Crash's original adventures the way people remember them, with Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy being developed for "old and new fans alike," Tanguay...
Video
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Watch 12 minutes of Nidhogg 2 gameplay

A dozen minutes of competitive jousting
Video
40 Comments

Watch 10 minutes of Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is set in a war-ravaged Republic of Georgia, in which the player is tasked with clearing out enemy camps, mostly using stealth, but also falling back on run-and-gun where necessary. This 10-minute gameplay video (above) shows an early mission, in which central character Jonathan North is trying to rescue some allies, who are digging their own graves in a churchyard, under the watchful eye of armed guards. The mission offers a look at how stealth works in the game, as well as sniping and close combat. Due for release on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One on April 4, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 is more of an open world than its somewhat linear predecessors. Players can make use of a drone in order to scout out enemy nests, while upgrading weapons and skills...
Video
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Dead Rising 4’s generic Google search results

Dead Rising 4 is a game that symbolizes all we have come to expect from this, the year 2016. Christmas is fucking cancelled, y’all. We answered questions about it on the latest episode of SEO Play. This high-scoring game is about familiar face Frank West, and that’s one question down already. People also wanted to know things such as “trailer,” “gameplay” and whether Dead Rising 4 would be on PlayStation 4. No. Despite such boring questions, this episode of SEO Play was a landmark experience, because during filming I learned that I can’t pronounce the word “sixth.” It’s just not possible and I no longer believe in it. From here on out, SEO Play will not be covering games released on the sixth of any month. Publishers, please respond accordingly. When bad things happen. SEO Play is...